Absalom & Achitophel

a

DRYDEN
ABSALOM & ACHITOPHEL

W. D. CHRISTIE

FIFTH EDITION

REVISED BY

C. H. FIRTH

OXFORD

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1911

HENRY FROWDE, M.A.

PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK

TORONTO AND MELBOURNE

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

THE Editor of this volume has published within the
last twelvemonth an edition of Dryden's Poems, — one
of Messrs. Macmillan's Globe Series, — with a carefully
revised text, the result of a labour of some duration.
The Globe edition of Dryden's Poems contains more
than a hundred corrections of the text as presented in
Sir Walter Scott's edition, or that of Mr. Robert Bell
in his series of the English Poets. In the portion of
Dryden's Poems published in this volume the text is
the same as that of the Globe edition; and there are
some forty corrections within the compass of these Poems.
The Notes to this volume contain a suggestion of one
new correction which I have not embodied in the text,
not feeling absolutely sure about it; but I think it prob-
able that the words Caledonian and Cakdon, which have
come down to us from Dryden in ' The Hind and the
Panther' (Part I. line 14, and Part III. line 3), were
intended by him to be Caledonian and Calydon.

VI PREFACE.

The Biography prefixed to this volume is of necessity
in much part a repetition of the longer Memoir at the
beginning of the Globe edition. Since the publica-
tion of the latter I have satisfied myself by additional
information obtained from Trinity College, Cambridge,
that the story of Dryden's continued residence at Cam-
bridge till 1657 is a mistake, and that he ceased to
reside there in 1654 or early in 1655.

W. D. C.

32 DORSET SQUARE, LONDON,
February 1871.

In this second edition I have been able to make an
interesting addition to the note at p. xvi. as to Dryden at
Trinity College.

W. D. C.

October, 1873.

In this fifth edition the notes have been revised, some
additional notes added, and some errors corrected. New
notes and material alterations in the old notes are marked
by an asterisk.

C. H. F.

October, 1892.

CONTENTS

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION . . «

TEXT 83

NOTES ....... - 259

GLOSSARY . • • 3<>3

NOTE

This edition of Absalom and Achitophel is taken from the
fifth edition of the Selections edited by W. D. Christie, as
revised by C. H. Firth ; the prefaces, introduction, and glossary
are here printed in their entirety.

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

THE poetry and authorship of Dryden cover a period of
more than half a century. His first poem was written in
youth, within a few months after the execution of Charles the
First, and his last a few days before death, within not many
months of the death of William the Third and the accession
of Anne to the throne. ' Glorious John Dryden,' or ' Glorious
John,' as Sir Walter Scott christened him, is the great literary
figure of the forty years that follow the Restoration. Dryden
was born only fifteen years, and his first poem was written only
thirty-three years, after the death of Shakespeare. It is strange
to find Dryden deliberately writing in 1672 that the English
language had been so changed since Shakespeare wrote, that
any one then reading his plays, or Fletcher's, or Jonson's,
and comparing them with what had been written since the
Restoration, would see the change 'almost in every line*.' .
There are frequent careless stat°mpTTfo *"^ ^aity ppr*™™"*- J?
tions in Drvden's critical dissertationst which were mostly ~[^i, '
composed rapidly tor particular occasions, and there may be
exaggeration in this assertion, but it probably contains more
truth than exaggeration. Milton, born eight years before
Shakespeare's death, was Dryden's senior by twenty-three

a Defence of the Epilogue to the Second Part of ' The Conquest of
Granada.'

X BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

years, and 'Paradise Lost' was published in 1669, the year
before that in which Dryden received the appointment of
poet laureate, succeeding Davenant, the author of 'Gon-
dibert,' and Dryden's co-operator in a versified abridgment
and debasement of 'Paradise Lost.' Milton died in 1674,
unhonoured by the multitude, when Dryden was at the height
of his dramatic popularity, and is spoken of as 'the good
and famous poet* by the cultivated Evelyn b. A quarter
of a century later Dryden had a splendid public funeral.
Cowley, who was Dryden's superior in the imaginative faculty,
and who, like Dryden after him, had had a fame unjustly
superior to Milton's during his life, had died in 1667. The
poetry of Cowley had been a favourite reading of Dryden's
youth. He speaks of Cowley, in several passages of his prose
writings, with the respect due to a master, and says on
one occasion that his authority is 'almost sacred' to him0.
Before the end of the seventeenth century, the popularity of
Cowley had disappeared d, and no traces of the influence of
his metaphysical style are to be discovered in any of Dryden's
poems later than the 'Annus Mirabilis' of 1666. Denham
and Waller, two poets of humbler order, had, while Dryden
was young, produced smooth and harmonious poems, and
contributed to the improvement of verse ; and it remained
for Dryden to advance this work, and bring metrical har-
mony to perfection in his own poems, and, during forty years
after the Restoration, of various writing in prose and in
verse, to give precision and purity and new wealth and capa-
bility to the English language..

* Evelyn's Diary, June 27, 1674.

c Essay on Heroic Plays, prefixed to the First Part of ' The Conquest
of Granada.'

d In the Preface to the ' Fables,' written in 1699, Dryden wrote of
Cowley : ' Though he must always be thought a great poet, he is no
longer esteemed a good writer ; and for ten impressions which his works
have had in so many successive years, yet at present a hundred books
are scarcely purchased once a twelvemonth ; for, as my last Lord
Rochester said, though somewhat profanely, " Not being of God, he
could not stand." '

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. XI

John Dryden was born on the 9th of August, 1631°, at
Aldwincle, a village in Northamptonshire, which was also the
birthplace of the Church historian, Thomas Fuller. Both
his parents belonged to Northamptonshire families of distinc-
tion. His father, Erasmus Dryden, the third son of Sir
Erasmus Dryden, Baronet, of Canons Ashby, was a Justice of
the Peace for Northamptonshire. The Drydens were all
Puritans and Commonwealthmen. Sir Erasmus Dryden, who
die cT in 1632, the year after the birth of his celebrated
grandson, was sent to prison, but a few years before his
death in old age, for refusing to pay loan-money to Charles
the First. To this event Dryden refers in his Epistle to his
cousin John Driden of Chesterton f, Member for Hunting-
donshire, whose public spirit he compares with their common
grandfather's : —

' Such was your generous grandsire, free to grant
In Parliaments that weighed their Prince's want,
But so tenacious of the common cause
As not to lend the king against his laws;
And in a loathsome dungeon doomed to lie,
In bonds retained his birthright liberty,
And shamed oppression till it set him free.'

The old man was liberated on the eve of the general election
for Charles the First's third Parliament in 1628. Sir John

e The year of Dryden's birth is incorrectly given as 1632 in the in-
scription on the monument in Westminster Abbey.

f Malone and some other biographers have said much about the
spelling of Dryden's name, and represented that he early in life deliber-
ately changed the spelling from Driden to Dryden ; and Malone has made
a statement, which appears to be totally without authority, that the poet
gave offence to his uncle, Sir John, by this change of spelling. The
spelling of names was very variable in Dryden's time, and I believe
there is nothing more than accident in the variations of spelling of his
name: Dryden, Driden, and also Dreyden and Dreydon occur. Dryden's
name is spelt Driden on title-pages of his works after the Restoration,
and in one instance ('Astraea Redux') as late as 1688. I follow other
biographers and editors in preserving the spelling Driden for the name of
his cousin John, to whom he addressed the beautiful poetical epistle, on
account of convenience of distinction.

Xll BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

Dryden, successor to Sir Erasmus, and Dryden's uncle,
inherited the Puritan zeal. Dryden's mother was Mary,
daughter of the Reverend Henry Pickering, rector of Ald-
wincle All Saints from 1597 till his death in 1637. The
Pickerings were near neighbours of the Drydens, and the
two families were connected by marriage before the union
of the poet's parents, a daughter of Sir Erasmus Dryden
having married Sir John Pickering, Knight, the elder brother
of the rector of Aldwincle. Sir Gilbert Pickering, the son
and successor of Sir John, was thus doubly related to Dryden.
Sir Gilbert, having been made a baronet by Charles the First,
became a Gromwellite, and held high office during the Pro-
tectorate; he was Chamberlain to Oliver Cromwell, and
High Steward of Westminster, and one of the so-called peers
of Cromwell's second Chamber of 1658, and afterwards one
of Richard Cromwell's chief advisers.

The marriage of Erasmus Dryden and Mary Pickering
took place on the 2ist of October 1630, in the church of
Pilton, a village near Aldwincle. The poet was their first child,
the eldest of a family of fourteen. A room in the parsonage-
house at Aldwincle All Saints is shown as his birthplace.
This tradition, which has been maintained uninterruptedly
from Dryden's time till now, is unsupported by positive
evidence, but as it necessitates only the probable supposi-
tion that his mother was on a visit to her parents at the time
of the birth of her first child, there is no reason for not
accepting it.

Of the early life of Dryden very little is known. His
father possessed a small property at Blakesley in the neigh-
bourhood of Canons Ashby, the seat of the Drydens, and of
Tichmarch the seat of the Pickerings. A monument erected
in Tichmarch church to his memory, by his cousin Mrs.
Creed, has an inscription which boasts that 'he was bred
and had his first learning here.' But the best part of his
education was obtained at Westminster, under Dr. Busby.
He entered the school as a King's Scholar, but in what year
is not known. He retained through life a pleasant remem-
brance of his Westminster days, and a great respect for Dr,

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. Xlll

Busby, to whom in 1693 he dedicated his translation of the
Fifth Satire of Persius. He says in the Dedication that he
had received from Dr. Busby 'the first and truest taste of
Persius.' Two of his sons were educated at Westminster
under the same head-master, Dr. Busby. He remembered
to the last, but without resentment, Dr. Busby's floggings.
In one of his latest letters, written in 1699 to Charles
Montague, Chancellor of the Exchequer, when sending for
his inspection some poems before publication, he speaks of
having corrected and re-corrected them, and he says, ' I am
now in fear that I have purged them out of their spirit, as
our Master Busby used to whip a boy so long till he made
him a confirmed blockhead.' Charles Montagu had been
educated at Westminster, but he was thirty years younger
than Dryden, and might have been at the school with Dryden's
sons.

In 1650 Dryden left Westminster with a scholarship, for
Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1649 he had written his
first poem, which gave little promise of the smoothness and
harmony of versification to which he afterwards attained.
Lord Hastings, the subject of it, the eldest son of the Earl
of Huntingdon, had been educated at Westminster, and his
rare attainments had raised among his friends high hopes of
future eminence. When these hopes were destroyed by his
untimely death from small pox, when he was just of age, in
1649, the event was lamented in as many as thirty-three
elegies by different authors, which were collected and pub-
lished in 1650 by Richard Brome, with the title of 'Lacrymse
Musarum, the Tears of the Muses; exprest in Elegies
written by divers Persons of nobility and worth upon the
death of Henry Lord Hastings, only son of the Right Hon-
ourable Ferdinando Earl of Huntingdon, heir-general of the
high-born Prince George, Duke of Clarence, brother to King
Edward the Fourth 8.' Among the contributors to this volume
were three who were already known as poets, and whose

* Sir Walter Scott, who had not seen this little volume, erroneously
gives ninety-eight as the number of the elegies.

XIV BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

fame has survived them, Denham, Herrick, and Andrew
Marvel. Dryden's second known poem, a short compli-
mentary address prefixed to a little volume of sacred poetry
by John Hoddesden, a friend and schoolfellow, was probably
written at the beginning of Dryden's residence at Gam-
bridge. Hoddesden's little volume bore the title ' Sion and
Parnassus,' and was published in 1650.

Dryden was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, on
the i8th of May, 1650; he matriculated July 16, and
was elected a scholar of the college on the Westminster
foundation, October 2, 1650. He took his degree of Bachelor
of Arts in January 1654. Beyond these dates very little is
known of his college life. With the exception of a single
passage in his life of Plutarch, where he mentions having
read that author in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge,
and adds that to that foundation he gratefully acknowledges
the debt of a great part of his education, there is no mention
of his Cambridge days in his writings ; and this silence has
created an impression that in after life he regarded Cambridge
with aversion. Some lines in one of his Oxford Prologues,
written in 1681, have seemed further proof of such a feeling —

1 Oxford to him a dearer name shall be
Than his own mother university;
Thebes did his green unknowing youth engage,
He chooses Athens in his riper age.'

But these lines prove nothing, being probably prompted by
no other motive than the desire of the moment to please an
Oxford audience. A passage in a letter from Dryden to
Wilmot Earl of Rochester, written in 1675, in which he
sends him copies of a Prologue and Epilogue for Oxford,
composed on another occasion, shows that all he wrote for
Oxford may not be sincere. He tells Rochester that the pieces
were approved, 'and by the event your lordship will judge
how easy 'tis to pass anything upon an University, and what
gross flattery the learned will endure.'

But Dryden's life at Cambridge had not passed always
pleasantly. In the second year of his residence at Trinity,

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. XV

he had incurred the displeasure of the authorities for 'dis-
obedience to the Vice-Master, and his contumacy in taking
of his punfchment.' What the disobedience was is not known;
the ultimate sentence assigned was ' that Dryden be .put out
of commons for a fortnight at least, and that he go not out
of the college during the time aforesaid, excepting to sermons,
without express leave from the Master or Vice-Master, and
that at the end of a fortnight he read a confession of his
crime in the Hall at dinner-time at the three Fellows' tables.'
And there may be some truth, with exaggeration also, in a
taunt of Shadwell, that he left Cambridge suddenly in con-
sequence of a quarrel.

Dryden's father died in June 1654, a few months after he
had taken his B.A. degree. By his father's death he inherited
two-thirds of a small estate at Blakesley, which gave him an
income of about 407. a year. The remaining third of the
property was left to his mother for her life, and she lived
till 1676. It is calculated that 40/. a year in Dryden's time
would have been equal to four times as much now. Dryden's
income would therefore have been sufficient to support him
decently with economy.

He ceased to be a scholar of Trinity in April 1655, before
the natural expiry by time of his scholarship, on account of
his having ceased to reside at Cambridge. This appears from
the following entry in the college Conclusion Book of April
23> I^55t 'That scholars be elected into the places of Sr.
Hooker, Sr. Sawies, Sr. Driden, Sr. Quincey, Sr. Burton;
with this proviso, that if the said Bachelors shall return to
the College at or before Midsummer next, to continue con-
stantly according to statute, then the scholars chosen into
their places respectively shall recede and give place to them,
otherwise to stand as proper scholars.' It further appears
that a young, man named Wilford was elected into Dryden's
place on the above-mentioned condition. The Senior Bursar's
book shows that neither Dryden nor any of the others for
whom as scholars successors were elected at the same time,
re-entered into their scholarships. They all received the
scholars' stipends up to Michaelmas 1655, and no further

XVI BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

payment is credited to any of them. It may therefore be
concluded that the story hitherto told, derived from Malone,
of Dryden's having returned to Cambridge after his father's
death, and having continued to reside there till the middle
of 1657, is not correct. He had ceased to reside before
April 1655; and if he returned to Cambridge after his
father's death in June 1654, it would have been only for a
very short time h.

Having ceased to be a scholar of the College, he was in-
eligible for a fellowship, the fellows being chosen exclusively
from the scholars. It has been thought surprising that he
did not, when the time came in 1657, take the degree of
Master of Arts, but the smallness of his means is quite suf-
ficient to explain why he did not do so. By the ancient

fc I am indebted to Mr. W. Aldis Wright, the late librarian of Trinity
College, for the information which has enabled me to contradict posi-
tively the old story of Dryden's continuing to reside at Cambridge till
1657. The story is Malone's, and on a careful examination of his
statements I see that the only authority, if it can be so called, for
Dryden's continued residence till 1657 is a description of him by Settle
in a polemical pamphlet as 'a man of seven years' standing at Cambridge.'
Malone was made aware, after the completion of his Life of Dryden,
of the entry in the Conclusion Book of April 23, 1655 ; and he mentions
this in his Additions and Emendations (Dryden's Prose Works by
Malone, vol. i. part 2, p. 134). But he adds 'that there are instances
of gownsmen residing at Cambridge after the loss of their scholarships.'
In the memoir in the Globe Edition of Dryden's poems, I have given the
old story of Dryden's continuing to reside till 1657 with doubt, and
stated that there is no proof of its correctness. I am now able posi-
tively to contradict it. The following interesting account of Dryden by
a college contemporary, the Rev. Dr. Crichton, is given in a letter written
in 1727 by a Mr. Pain, which is in the Trinity College Library, and has
been lately found by Mr. W. A. Wright, who has obligingly furnished it
to me. It confirms the fact of Dryden's early departure from Trinity
after taking his B.A. degree. ' The Doctor also mentioned something
of Dryden the poet, which I tell you because you may have occasion to
say something of him. Dryden, he said, was two years above him, and
was reckoned a man of good parts and learning while in college : he had
to his knowledge read over and very well understood all the Greek and
Latin poets : he stayed to take his Bachelor's degree, but his head was
too roving and active, or what else you'll call it, to confine himself to
a college life, and so he left it and went to London into gayer company,
and set up for a poet, which he was as well qualified for as any man.'

-

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xvii

statutes of the University, any one possessed of any estate,
annuity, or certain income for life amounting to 267. 13^. $d.
was required to pay 61. 6s. \d. in addition to the ordinary
fees for any degree ; and those for the M.A. degree for one
not a fellow would be as much. Dryden, with his small
income of forty pounds, might naturally be unwilling to incur
this expense. It is possible also that Dryden's premature
departure from Cambridge without fellowship or degree may
have been caused by a disagreeable incident, such as he is
taunted with by Shadwell —

'At Cambridge first your scurrilous vein began,
Where saucily you traduced a nobleman,
Who for that crime traduced you on the head,
And you had been expelled had you not fled1.*

The scurrility of Shadwell is anything but perfect authority,
but there must have been some foundation for the taunt of
these malicious lines.

A degree of Master of Arts was conferred on Dryden by
the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1668, on the recommenda-
tion of King Charles the Second, when he had made himself
known as an author, and had acquired the King's favour by
political poems and plays suited to his taste.

There is no information about Dryden's life after his
leaving Cambridge till he appeared as an author in London
on the occasion of Oliver Cromwell's death. It has always
hitherto been said that he began to reside in London about
the middle of 1657; but this was probably a part of the
story that he continued to reside till 1657 at Cambridge.
It is not impossible that he went to London earlier than
has been hitherto supposed ; and it is quite possible that he
may have gone there later. He was probably aided by his
relative, Sir Gilbert Pickering, at the beginning of his life
in London, and he may have gone thither soon after his
father's death to profit by Sir Gilbert's friendship. High in
Cromwell's favour, a member of his Privy Council, and
Chamberlain of his household, he was in a position to render

* ' The Medal of John Bayes.'

b

xviil BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

valuable assistance to his clever young cousin. Shad well,
after taunting Dryden with discreditable flight from Cam-
bridge, next holds him up to scorn as clerk to Sir Gilbert —

' The next step of advancement you began,
Was being clerk to Noll's Lord Chamberlain,
A sequestrator and Committee manV

It is not improbable that Sir Gilbert employed him as his
secretary.

Oliver Cromwell died on the 3rd of September, 1658; and
Dryden, now in his twenty-seventh year, wrote a poem in
honour of his memory. Since he had written the verses to
John Hoddesden in 1650, being then an undergraduate at
Cambridge, he had written no poetry that is known, and the
'Heroic Stanzas' to the memory of the Protector is his
first poem of any importance. This poem was published
with two others on the same subject by Waller and Sprat.
It is written in quatrain stanzas, and is very superior to
Dryden's two earlier efforts. When the ' Heroic Stanzas '
appeared, Richard Cromwell seemed to be firmly established
as his father's successor, and Dryden celebrated the peaceful
security which the able and vigorous government of the Pro-
tector had bequeathed to his country.

' No civil broils have since his death arose,

But faction now by habit does obey;
And wars have that respect for his repose

As winds for halcyons when they breed at sea.

His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest;

His name a great example stands to show
How strangely high endeavours may be blessed

Where piety and valour jointly go.'

This tranquillity was of short duration. On the meeting of
Parliament in January 1659 it was evident that Richard
Cromwell was unable to rule, and in less than eighteen
months after the publication of the ' Heroic Stanzas '
Charles the Second was restored.

k Malone strangely thinks that the last line may apply to Dryden
himself, but it is clearly intended for Sir Gilbert Pickering.

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. XIX

Sir Gilbert Pickering, who had been closely and con-
spicuously connected with both the Protectors, and who had
sat as one of the judges at the trial of Charles the First,
though not when sentence was given, was lucky to escape
with life and with most of his property. He was made in-
capable of all office, and became a private and powerless man.
Dryden, having lost this serviceable benefactor, and not being
disposed to sacrifice all advancement to political consistency,
became a warm Royalist, and now endeavoured, by zealously
espousing the cause of the restored King, to blot out all
recollection of his praises of the Protector. ' Astraea Redux,'
a poem written in celebration of the return of the King, was
published before the end of the year, and was quickly fol-
lowed by two other poems in like strain, a ' Panegyric ' ad-
dressed to the King on his coronation, and an address to the
Lord Chancellor Clarendon, on New Year's Day, 1662. These
poems doubtless brought presents of money. Some compli-
mentary verses, addressed by Dryden to Sir Robert Howard,
were published in 1660, in the beginning of a volume of
Howard's poems, the first of which was a panegyric on the
restored King, and the last a panegyric on Monk, his chief
restorer. Sir Robert Howard was a younger son of the
Earl of Berkshire, who had been constant, with all his family,
to the cause of royalty, and had impoverished himself in the
cause. Henry Herringman was at this time the fashionable
publisher, and published both for Howard and Dryden.
Shadwell proceeds, in his vituperative biography, to taunt
Dryden with drudgery for Herringman, and with living on
Howard.

1 He turned a journeyman to a bookseller,
Wrote prefaces to books for meat and drink,
And, as he paid, he would both write and think;
Then, by the assistance of a noble knight,
Thou hadst plenty, ease, and liberty to write :
First like a gentleman he made thee live,
And on his bounty thou didst amply thrive1.'

1 'The Medal of John Bayes.*

b2

XX BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

Theatrical representations, which the austerity of the
Puritans had proscribed during the Commonwealth, were
now revived, and Dryden immediately turned to play- writing
and made it a source of income. After the Restoration, two
theatres, and only two, were licensed, one called the King's,
which was under the management of Thomas Killigrew, the
court wit and a dramatic writer, and the other, the Duke of
York's, under the poet laureate, Sir William Davenant.
Dryden's first play, ' The Wild Gallant,' was produced at the
King's Theatre, in February 1663. It was not successful, and
he attributed the failure to his boldness 'in beginning with
comedy, which is the most difficult part of dramatic poetry.'
A tragi-comedy, 'The Rival Ladies,' brought out in the
same year, was better received. Pepys, who had pronounced
'The Wild Gallant' 'so poor a thing as ever he saw in his
life,' thought this 'a very innocent and most pretty witty
play m.' The plots of both plays are extravagantly improbable,
and coarseness and indecency appear in both. But they
pleased the court, perhaps rather on account of than in spite
of their demerits ; and even the unpopular ' Wild Gallant '
was specially favoured by Lady Castlemaine, and her royal
lover caused it to be several times performed at court.
Dryden next assisted Sir Robert Howard in the composition
of a tragedy, ' The Indian Queen,' which was acted with
great success at the King's Theatre, in January 1664.

Before ' The Indian Queen ' was brought out on the stage,
Howard and Dryden had become brothers-in-law. Dryden
was married to Lady Elizabeth Howard on the ist of
December 1663. This was not a happy marriage. Lady
Elizabeth was a woman of violent temper, and had apparently
no sympathy with her husband's literary pursuits. Dryden
has been taunted by some of the virulent foes of his later
life with having been hectored into this marriage by the lady's
brothers in order to save her reputation ; and there is
reason to believe that her conduct before marriage was not

m Diary, February 23, 1663, and August 4, 1664.

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. XXI

irreproachable. If this were so, happiness could hardly be
expected.

The success of ' The Indian Queen '. encouraged Dryden to
bring out in the following year, 1665, a sequel, under the title
of ' The Indian Emperor/ and that play was a great success
and mucFadvanced Dry den's fame. ' The Indian Emperor '
was published in 1667, with a dedication to the young and
beautiful Duchess of Monmouth, the 'charming Annabel*
of 'Absalom and Achitophel,' who was an early patroness of
Dryden, and whom in his later years he called his ' first and
best patroness0.' 'The Rival Ladies' had been published
with a dedication to the Earl of Orrery, a dramatic writer.
'The Wild Gallant' was not published till 1669, when the
fame otherwise acquired by Dryden helped to recommend it
to favour. He revived 'The Wild Gallant' on the stage
in 1667.

In the summer of 1665 the Plague broke out in London,
and all who could do so fled to the country. Dryden retired
to Gharlton, in Wiltshire, the seat of his father-in-law, Lord
Berkshire, and he remained there for the greater part of
eighteen months. During this period of retreat he wrote the
'Annus Mirabilis,' the 'Essay on Dramatic Poesy,' and the
comedy of ' Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen.'

The ' Annus Mirabilis,' a poem celebrating the events of )
the year 1665-6, and describing the war with Holland, the (
Plague, and the Great Fire of London, was published in i667f
with a dedication to the Metropolis, and a long preface ad-
dressed to Sir Robert Howard. This poem is written in the
quatrain stanzas in which Dryden had sung the praises of
Oliver Cromwell eight years before. In the preface he says,
' I have chosen to write my poem in quatrain stanzas of four
alternate rhymes, because I have ever judged them more
noble and of greater dignity both for sound and numbers
than any other verse in use among us.' The minute know-
ledge of naval matters displayed in the poem was acquired

Dedication of ' King Arthur,' to the Marquis of Halifax, 1691.

xxii BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

it appears, for the occasion and under some difficulties. * For
my own part,' he says, ' if I had little knowledge of the sea,
yet I have thought it no shame to learn, and if I have made
some mistakes, it is only, as you can bear me witness, because
I have wanted opportunity to correct them, the whole poem
being first written and now sent you from a place where I
have not so much as the converse of any seaman.' In this
poem Dryden's skill and force of language is first strikingly
remarkable. Some parts of it, and especially the description
of the Fire of London, are very fine.

Dryden's next publication was the ' Essay on Dramatic
Poesy,' also written during his long residence at Charlton:
this was published in 1668. A subject treated of in this essay
was the use of rhyme in tragedies, which was now the fashion,
and favoured by the King. Dryden had praised rhymed
tragedies in his dedication to the Earl of Orrery, of the
'Rival Ladies,' published in 1664. In the following year Sir
Robert Howard published a collection of plays, with a pre-
face, in which, though he had himself done tragedy in rhyme,
he severely criticised Dryden's doctrine. In the 'Essay on
Dramatic Poesy,' Dryden vindicated his views. The essay was
in the form of a conversation between four persons, Eugenius,
Lisideius, Crites, and Neander ; and under these names were
respectively veiled Lord Buckhurst (afterwards Earl of Dor-
set), Sir Charles Sedley, Sir Robert Howard, and Dryden
himself. Neander maintained the cause of rhyme in tragedies,
and Crites argued on the other side with inferior force.
This led to a literary controversy with Howard, which pro-
duced for a time some ill-feeling between the brothers-in-
law, but the estrangement did not last long.

During the ravages of the Plague and Fire the playhouses
had been closed. They were re-opened towards the close
of 1666, and in the following March 'Secret Love, or the
Maiden Queen,' the play which Dryden had written at Charl-
ton, was brought out at the King's Theatre. It was a great
success. Pepys, who was present on the first night, com-
mends ' the regularity of it and the strain of wit,' and is quite
enthusiastic in his praises of Nell Gwyn, in the part of

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. XX111

Florimel °. The play was published in the following year,
with a preface, in which Dryden states that Charles had
' graced ' the successful comedy ' with the title of his play.'
Another comedy, ' Sir Martin Mar-all,' was brought out in
the autumn of 1667 at the Duke's House. This was an
adaptation of Moliere's play, 'L'Etourdi,' which had been
translated by the Duke of Newcastle ; and when it appeared
on the stage, Pepys tells us that the general opinion was that
it was a c play by the Lord Duke of Newcastle, and corrected
by Dryden.' Dryden afterwards published himself as author,
and we may take for granted that the authorship was really
his. 'The Tempest, or the Enchanted Island,' produced at
the Duke's Theatre in November, 1667, was an adaptation by
Dryden and Davenant of Shakespeare's Tempest. The new
play was nothing more nor less than a debasement of Shake-
speare's, and Dryden doubtless knew well its inferiority. In
the prologue he paid a fine tribute to the genius of Shake-
speare. These are the opening lines : —

• As when a tree's cut down, the secret root,
Lives underground, and thence new branches shoot,
So from old Shakespeare's honoured dust this day
Springs up and buds a new reviving play :
Shakespeare, who, taught by none, did first impart
To Fletcher wit, to labouring Jonson art;
He, monarch-like, gave these his subjects law,
And is that Nature which they paint and draw.'

And in the same prologue he says —

' But Shakespeare's magic could not copied be ;

Within that circle none durst walk but he.'
Again—

' But Shakespeare's power is sacred as a king's.*
Dryden and Davenant's ' Tempest ' was published by Dryden
in 1668, Davenant having died in the interval: and in the
preface Dryden mentions that Davenant had taught him to
venerate Shakespeare.

0 Diary, March 2, 1667.

XXIV BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

If Dryden's mutilation of the Tempest seems incon-
sistent with his reverence for Shakespeare, it must be borne
in mind that JDr^n^wrgte. for money, that to adapt took
less time than to create, and that the audiences for which he
wrote neglected Shakespeare's plays and applauded Dryden's.

' Those who have best succeeded on the stage
Have still conformed their genius to their age P.*

The year 1667 had been one of great dramatic success for
Dryden. The 'Maiden Queen/ 'Sir Martin Mar-all,' and
' The Tempest ' had all been well received, and his first play,
' The Wild Gallant,' unsuccessful when it first appeared, had
been revived with some success.

Until now the profits derived by Dryden from his plays
had come from the third night's representation, which custom
made the author's benefit, from the prices received from his
publisher, from presents in return for dedications, and prob-
ably also from a retaining fee from the King's company, to
which all his plays were given. A successful ' third night ' of
a play would probably at this time bring Dryden forty or at
most fifty guineas, and the price of the copyright of one of
his plays would now be but a trifle. Thus, for ' Cleomenes,'
one of his latest plays, he is known to have received thirty
guineas, and no more; and this was probably the highest
price he ever got. He is said never to have received, in his
days of greatest fame, more than a hundred guineas for third
night and copyright together. There had been no dedication
to his last three published plays, the ' Maiden Queen,' ' Sir
Martin Mar-all,' and 'The Tempest.' But henceforth his
plays were always dedicated to some noble patron, who, ac-
cording to the custom of the time, sent a present of money
in return for the compliment. To recount Dryden's noble
patrons is a necessary part of his biography. ' What I pre-
tend by this dedication,' he said in 1691, in dedicating 'King
Arthur* to George Savile Lord Halifax, ' is an honour which
I do myself to posterity by acquainting them that I have been
conversant with the first persons of the age in which I lived.'

P Dryden'b Epilogue to the Second Part of ' The Conquest of Granada.'

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. XXV

After the production of ' The Tempest ' he entered into a
contract with the King's company, by which he bound him-
self to produce three plays a year, in return for a share and a
quarter of the profits of the theatre, all which were divided
into twelve shares and a quarter. Under this arrangement
Dry den received from 1667 to 1672 a yearly income of from
3oo/. to 400 /. a year. The King's Theatre was burnt down
in 1672, and the losses of the company then reduced
Dryden's share of profits to about 2oo/. a year. His reci-
procal duty, to write three plays a year, was never fulfilled ;
but the company appear to have behaved always generously
to him and not to have mulqted him for his shortcomings.

Under this new contract two comedies, * An Evening's Love,
or the Mock Astrologer,' an adaptation of the younger Cor-
neille's ' Feint Astrologue,' and ' Ladies a la Mode,' were pro-
duced in 1668. 'An Evening's Love' was not very successful.
Evelyn went to see it, and was ' afflicted to see how the stage
was degenerated and polluted by the licentious times <i.' The
criticism of Samuel Pepys is very similar, and Herringman,
the publisher, told Pepys that Dryden himself considered it
but a fifth-rate play r. Of * Ladies a la Mode,' Pepys, from
whom alone we have knowledge of it, says that it was a trans-
lation from the French, and that it was ' so mean a thing as
when they came to say it would be acted again, both he that
said it, Beeson, and the pit fell a laughing, there being this day
not a quarter of the pit full.' It was never acted again, and
Dryden never published it 8.

Dryden's mother died in 1670. He was an affectionate
son, and there are indeed none but pleasant indications of his
relations with members of his family. The first of some
little bequests in the will of the mother, who had little to
leave, is a silver tankard and her wedding-ring to her son,
now so famous. 'I give and bequeath to my beloved son,
John Dryden, a silver tankard marked with J. D., and a gold

« Evelyn's Diary, June 19, 1668.

* Pepys' Diary, June 20 and 22, 1668.

• Ibid. September 15, 1668.

XXVI BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

ring, which was my wedding-ring. And it is my will that
after the decease of my dear son, John Dryden, his eldest
son, Charles Dryden, should have the ring as a gift from his
grandmother, Mary Dryden/ On the death of his mother,
Dryden came into possession of the whole of the little Blakesley
estate, and the addition thus made to his income was not more
than 2o/. a year: but his income at this time, derived from
various sources, from his estate, his salary and his brain-work,
probably amounted to about yoo/. a year.

Three tragedies in heroic verse, ' Tyrannic Love, or the
Royal Martyr,' and ' Almanzor and Almahide, or the Con-
quest of Granada,' in two parts, .each being a separate play,
appeared in 1669 and 1670, and added greatly to Dry den's
fame. ' Tyrannic Love ' was dedicated to the Duke of Mon-
mouth, and 'The Conquest of Granada' to the Duke of York.
In August 1670 he received a substantial mark of royal
favour. The two appointments of Poet Laureate and Histo-
riographer Royal, which had been vacant, the one since the
death of Sir William Davenant in 1668, the other since the
death of James Howell in 1666, were conferred upon Dryden,
with a salary of 20o/. a year and arrears from Midsummer
1668; and an annual butt of canary wine from the King's
cellars was added to the salary.

In December 1671 'The Rehearsal,' a farce the prepara-
tion of which had for some ten years occupied the second
George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and in which he is said
to have had assistance from the author of 'Hudibras' and
others, was brought out at the King's Theatre. The object
of this farce was to ridicule the rhymed tragedies of the
Restoration. The farce had been begun some time before
the death of the former poet laureate, Davenant, and he had
been the original hero, but Davenant dying before the farce
was finished, Dryden, his successor in the laureateship, was
caricatured in his stead as the poet ' Bayes.' It is said that
the Duke of Buckingham himself drilled the actor, Lacey, to
whom the part of ' Bayes ' was allotted, to imitate Dryden's
manner *. The piece had a great success, and its fame endures ;

* Spence's Anecdotes (Villiers, Duke of Buckingham).

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. XXvii

the name of Bayes stuck to Dryden through life. Dryden
bore this attack in silence, claiming credit in later years
for a forbearance which was probably prompted by prudence,
for Buckingham was at the time a leading minister and in
great favour with the King u.

During the year 1671 Dryden produced no play. In
January 1672 the King's Theatre in Drury Lane was burnt
down, and the company removed to a house in Lincoln's Inn
Fields. The impoverished circumstances of the company,
which directly affected himself, probably stimulated Dryden
to exertion, and in this year he produced two new comedies,
' Marriage a la Mode,' which was very successful, and ' The
Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery,' which was condemned.
'Amboyna, or the Cruelties of the Dutch to the English
Merchants,' was Dryden's next production. England and
France were now jointly engaged in war against Holland, and
the tragedy of 'Amboyna' was written for the purpose of
inflaming national feeling against the Dutch. This is one of
Dryden's worst plays. It was written, he says, * in haste, but
with an English heart.' This eager advocate of the Dutch
war of 1672 afterwards reviled and persecuted Shaftesbury
for having promoted it. 'Amboyna* was dedicated to Lord
Clifford, Shaftesbury's colleague in what is called the Cabal
Ministry, who was a private friend and zealous patron of
Dryden. 'Marriage a la Mode' had been dedicated to
Wilmot Earl of Rochester, who later became Dryden's
virulent enemy, but of whom he now said, addressing him,
1 You have not only been careful of my reputation, but of my
fortune,' and ' I have found the effects of your protection in
all my concernments.' ' The Assignation* was dedicated to the
witty and dissolute Sir Charles Sedley.

u There is a severe and vigorous poem on the Duke of Buckingham
printed in the collection called ' State Poems,' which some have ascribed
to Dryden, but probably wrongly. The slow composition of ' The Re-
hearsal' is there alluded to :

'I come to his farce, which must needs be well done,
For Troy was not longer before it was won,
Since 'tis more than ten years since this farce was begun.'

xxviil BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

'The State of Innocence,' a transformation of 'Paradise
Lost' into an opera, and intended for the stage but never
acted, was Dryden's literary work of the year 1674. Aubrey
relates that Dryden called on Milton to ask permission to
versify his poem, and was dryly told by the blind old man that
he might 'tag his verses' if he pleased. ' Paradise Lost' had
been published five years before, and had not excited enthu-
siasm. But Dryden had taken a just measure of the poem,
and in the preface of his own 'State of Innocence' he de-
clared it to be ' undoubtedly one of the greatest, most noble,
and sublime poems which either this age or nation has pro-
duced.' Shortly after the publication of 'The State of
Innocence' Milton died, on the 8th of November, 1674.
Dryden's well-known lines on Milton were written fourteen
years later, to be printed under his portrait prefixed to an
edition of 'Paradise Lost,' published by subscription in 1695
by Jacob Tonson.

' Three poets in three distant ages born
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed,
The next in majesty, in both the last.
The force of nature could no farther go :
To make a third she joined the former two.'

In the prologue of ' Aurengzebe, or the Great Mogul,' a
tragedy produced in 1675, Dryden informed his audience that
he had grown tired of rhyme in tragedy and generally dis-
satisfied with play-writing. Having begun by speaking dis-
paragingly of the play, but, as he said, 'out of no feigned
modesty,' he proceeds in this prologue : —

• Not that it 's worse than what before he writ,
But he has now another taste of wit:
And to confess a truth, though out of time,
Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rhyme.
Passion 's too fierce to be in fetters bound,
And Nature flies him like enchanted ground.
What verse can do he has performed in this,
Which he presumes the most correct of his;

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. XXIX

But spite of all his pride, a secret shame
Invades his breast at Shakespeare's sacred name:
Awed when he hears his godlike Roman rage,
He in a just despair would quit the stage ;
And to an age less polished, more unskilled
Does with disdain the foremost honours yield.
As with the greater dead he dares not strive,
He would not match his verse with those who live.
Let him retire betwixt two ages cast,
The first of this and hindmost of the last.'

Dryden had now for some time wished to apply himself to
the composition of an epic poem: but for this leisure was
necessary, and play-writing gave him bread. He explains
himself on this subject in the dedication of ' Aurengzebe,' to
Sheffield Earl of Mulgrave. He had had an opportunity,
through Mulgrave's good offices, of speaking both with the
King and the Duke of York of his desire to devote himself to
the production of a national epic poem, and he now asked
Mulgrave to remind the King of his ambition. Several years
later, in 1693, in his 'Discourse on Satire,' addressed to the
Earl of Dorset, he mentions two subjects which he had
thought of; one was the conquest of Spain by Edward the
Black Prince, and the other King Arthur conquering the
Saxons. Dryden's wishes were not gratified by the King.
No office was given him which relieved him from the neces-
sity of writing for subsistence. It is however possible that
the King may now have granted him the pension of ioo/. a
year in addition to the salaried offices of Poet Laureate and
Historiographer Royal, which it has been lately ascertained
that he obtained during the reign of Charles II ; but the date
of the grant of the pension is not known x.

Dryden's next play did not appear for two years after;

* This pension from Charles was first made known by the publication
by Mr. R. Bell in 1854 of a treasury warrant of 1684 for payment of
arrears ; and Mr. P. Cunningham has since published a treasury warrant
for payment of a quarter due January 5, 1679. (Johnson's 'Lives of
the Poets/ Cunningham's edition, vol. i. p. 334, note.)

XXX BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

it was 'All for Love, or the World Well Lost,' the story
of Antony and Cleopatra, and it was produced at the King's
Theatre in the winter of 1677-8. To the preparation of
this tragedy Dryden had devoted more time and labour
than usual, and he considered it his best play. * All for Love'
had great success, and the company gave Dryden the benefit of
the third night, to which the terms of his contract did not
entitle him. This act of generosity appears to have been ill
requited by Dryden; his next play 'GEdipus,' written in
conjunction with Nathaniel Lee, was given to the Duke's
company and brought out at the rival theatre. This was
regarded by the King's company as a breach of contract, with
the aggravation of ingratitude. He had never fulfilled his
engagement to write three plays a year, and indeed had pro-
duced on an average less than one a year. The King's company
now complained to the Earl of Arlington, the Lord Chamber-
lain, of Dryden's proceeding as a violation of contract ; but
there is no sign of their having obtained redress y. Dryden
now broke with the King's Theatre, or the King's Theatre
with him, and his subsequent plays came out at the rival
house. 'The Kind Keeper, or Limberham,' a very coarse
comedy, followed ' CEdipus,1 and gave such offence that, after
it had been three times acted, Dryden withdrew it. In April
1679, he produced with indifferent success ' Troilus and Cres-
sida,' an adaptation of Shakespeare's play. ' All for Love,' on
its publication, was dedicated to the Earl of Danby, then the
chief Minister ; ' Limberham,' to Lord Vaughan, a literary
nobleman, and ' Troilus and Cressida,' to the Earl of Sunder-
land, a rising politician and future leading minister.

As Dryden was returning to his house in Long Acre through
Rose Alley, Drury Lane, on the night of the i8th of
December, 1679, he was fallen upon and severely beaten by a
gang of ruffians. There appears to be little doubt that the

y Almost all our information as to Dryden's partnership in the King's
Theatre is derived from this memorial of complaint addressed to the
Lord Chamberlain, which is printed in Malone's Life of Dryden, p. 73.

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. XXXI

instigator of this cowardly attack was Wilmot Earl of Ro-
chester, who conceived Dryden to be the author of a poem in
circulation, an Essay on Satire, in which he was severely
attacked. Sheffield Earl of Mulgrave, afterwards Marquis
of Normanby and Duke of Buckinghamshire, is now known
to have been the author of the poem ; but at the time a
belief seems to have prevailed that Dryden had written it.
It is not impossible that Dryden may have seen the poem
before it was put in circulation and given it some revision.
Yet it is difficult to believe that Dryden, who was dependent
on the King's pleasure for 3007. a year of his income, would
have been so imprudent as to make himself in any way respon-
sible for a poem in which the King also was severely assailed.
It is more likely that the great intimacy which existed at this
period between Dryden and Mulgrave is the sole origin of the
suspicion. Mulgrave positively asserted in a note in a later
edition of the poem that Dryden was entirely innocent of the
authorship. In a poem of Rochester's, published the year
before, Dryden had been freely and unpleasantly criticised,
and Rochester may have expected retaliation and been
prone to conclude that Mulgrave's attack on him came from
Dryden. These are Rochester's lines in his * Allusion to
the Tenth Satire of the First Book of Horace/ published in
1673.

•Well, sir, 'tis granted, I said Dryden's rhymes
Were stol'n, unequal, nay, dull many times.
What foolish patron is there found of his
So blindly partial to deny me this?
But that his plays, embroidered up and down
With wit and learning, justly pleased the town,
In the same paper I as freely own.
Yet having this allowed, the heavy mass
That stuffs up his loose volumes must not pass.*

A publicly advertised offer of a reward of fifty pounds for
the discovery of the offenders failed to furnish any clue to
the author of this dastardly assault. This Rose Alley assault
became the theme of many taunts from Dryden's bitter

XXXli BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

adversaries after he threw himself into political contro-
versies2.

One of Dryden's most successful plays was the ' Spanish
Friar, or the Double Discovery,' a satire on the Roman
Catholic priesthood, produced at the Duke's Theatre in 1681,
at a time when popular feeling was strongly excited against
the Papists, and when the question of the day was the exclu-
sion of the Duke of York from the succession because he
was a Roman Catholic.

Dryden's pecuniary resources about this time had be-
come much crippled. Through the poverty of the Treasury,
his salary and pension were not paid, and in May 1684 there
was a four years' accumulation of arrears. After the produc-
tion of the ' Spanish Friar,' Dryden turned from play-writing
to political satire. His famous political poem ' Absalom and
Achitophel ' was published in November 1681. The subject
of the poem, Shaftesbury and Monmouth, is said to have been
suggested by the King himself. Monmouth, the Absalom of
the poem, for whom his father, Charles, had always a tender
affection, is treated through the poem with great delicacy, but
Shaftesbury, who is Achitophel, is truculently and unscru-
pulously assailed. Together with Shaftesbury, Buckingham,
who was now one of the great Protestant opposition to the
court, is described in Dryden's happiest vein, under the name
of Zimri.

Shaftesbury had been lying in the Tower under a charge
of high treason since July 2, 1681, and Dryden's poem was
published a very few days before his trial, probably with the
deliberate object of inflaming public opinion against him and
helping to obtain a condemnation. The poem was published
on November 17 ; on November 24 the bill of indictment

» One of these is worth quoting to illustrate the old pronunciation of
aches as a word of two syllables as late as 1680 —

' Thus needy Bayes, his Rose Street aches past.'

'The Protestant Satire.'

Dryden himself pronounced the word in the same manner in his first
poem, the 'Elegy on Lord Hastings,' written in 1649. Aches rhymes
with catches in ' Hudibras,' Part II. Canto ii. 1. 456 ; and see also
Part III. Canto ii. 1. 407 of ' Hudibras.'

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. XXXlil

against Shaftesbury went before a London grand jury, and
was thrown out. The decision was received by the people
of London with acclamations, and a medal was struck by his
friends in commemoration of his triumph. The sale of
* Absalom and Achitophel' was so rapid that a second edition
appeared within a month. The medal celebrating Shaftes-
bury's escape from his persecutors furnished Dryden with a
subject and a name for a new political satire, which was even
more fierce against Shaftesbury than its predecessor. ' The
Medal* was brought out in March 1682. This poem, as well
as ' Absalom and Achitophel,' was published anonymously,
but there was no doubt as to the authorship of either poem ;
and Dry den's opponents were quick to produce answers, all
more remarkable for virulence than literary merit. 'The
Medal of John Bayes,' by Shadwell, especially roused Dryden's
anger. Shadwell and he had formerly been on friendly terms,
and Dryden had written in 1678 a prologue to Shad well's
play, 'The True Widow.' They probably now quarrelled
only on political grounds. There was now great fury between
the partisans of the Duke of York and those of the Duke ot
Monmouth, and at this period arose the divisions and the
names of Whig and Tory. Dryden was with the Tories, and
Shadwell with Shaftesbury, Monmouth, and the Whigs. ' The
Medal of John Bayes' provoked Dryden to write a new
satire, ' Mac Flecknoe,' in which Shadwell is represented as
the poetical heir of Flecknoe, an inferior poet and voluminous
author, who had died some five years before. ' Mac Flecknoe '
was published in October 1682. In the following month a
second part of 'Absalom and Achitophel' appeared. Of this
poem only a small portion was by Dryden ; the bulk of the
poem being the production of Nahum Tate, who afterwards
translated the Psalms into verse, and became in time poet
laureate. Dryden contributed two hundred lines, and he
perhaps revised the whole of Tate's work.

Dryden now passed from politics to theology, and pro-
duced ' Religio Laid,' a clear and argumentative exposition
in harmonious verse, of the Protestant faith. The merits of
this poem are happily, and without exaggeration, described

xxxiv BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

by Dryden's friend and brother-poet, Lord Roscommon, in
some lines of commendation which were prefixed to the
poem on its publication : —

' Let free impartial men from Dryden learn
Mysterious secrets of a high concern,
And weighty truths, solid convincing sense,
Explained by unaffected eloquence.'

A drama, the ' Duke of Guise,' a joint work of Dryden and
Nathaniel Lee, was brought out in December 1682. The two
rival theatres had now found it necessary to combine, and
this was the first new play brought out by the united com-
pany. In the prologue Dryden announced the play to be a
parallel : —

' Our play 's a parallel ; the Holy League
Begot our covenant ; Guisards got the Whig.'

In spite of Dryden's zealous championship of the court,
his salary remained unpaid, and his pecuniary distress was
great. In a letter to Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester,
a Commissioner of the Treasury, probably written in the
latter part of 1683, he prays for the payment of the arrears
of his salary, amounting to about 13007., and asks also for
some small appointment. He says in this letter, ' I have
three sons growing to man's estate; I breed them all up to
learning, beyond my fortune; but they are too hopeful to
be neglected, though I want.' Of these sons, Charles, the
eldest, born in 1665 or 1666, entered Trinity College, Cam-
bridge, as a Westminster Scholar, in June 1683 ; the second,
John, born 1667 or 1668, was now at Westminster; and the
youngest, Erasmus Henry, born in May 1669, had been ad-
mitted to the Charterhouse by the nomination of the King
in February 1683. It was probably in consequence of Dryden's
appeal to Rochester that an Exchequer warrant for the pay-
ment of half a year's salary and a quarter's pension was issued
on the 6th of May, 1684; and there is reason to believe that
in time all arrears were paid to him. He received also in
December 1683 the appointment of Collector of Customs
in London, which may have been a profitable one.

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. XXXV

Various literary labours occupied the poet at this time. In
1683 he contributed a life and a preface to a new translation
of Plutarch by various hands, and he translated, by order of the
King, Maimbourg's * History of the League.' In 1684 and
1685 he published successively two volumes of poetical Mis-
cellanies, containing, with some poems by other authors,
translations of his own from Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. To
the second volume his eldest son was a contributor.

On the sth of February, 1685, Charles the Second died, and
the crown passed to his brother James. Before the King's
death Dryden had written an opera, ' Albion and Albanius,' to
celebrate the triumph of the court party over the opposition ;
this had not yet been publicly acted, but it had been several
times rehearsed at court with approval. * Albion and Albanius '
was published after James's accession. But before this pub-
lication Dryden produced an ode to the memory of Charles
under the title of 'Threnodia Augustalis,' in which both
Charles and James were extravagantly lauded.

As, on the restoration of Charles the Second, Dryden, to'
win royal favour, had broken away from all the associations
of his youth, and had appeared without delay as the eager
champion of monarchy, so now, when a declared Roman1
Catholic was seated on the throne, and to be a Roman
Catholic seemed the best way to advancement, he was soon
convinced that it was right to be a Roman Catholic. Before
his conversion James had continued him in the posts of Poet
Laureate and Historiographer Royal; and shortly after it,
in March 1686, the additional pension of ioo/. a year, which
had been granted him by Charles, was renewed by letters
patent. Lord Macaulay, who has represented this pension
granted by James as the reward of Dryden's conversion,
wrote before it was known to be merely a renewal of an
old pension granted to Dryden by his predecessor, and he
has certainly exaggerated its effects in producing that con-
version ; but it would be difficult to prove that Lord Macaulay
has been unjust in ascribing Dryden's change of religion to
interested motives a.

a History of England, vol. ii. p. 96.
C 2

XXXVI BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

During the greater part of the year 1686 Dry den was
engaged in writing ' The Hind and the Panther,' an elaborate
defence in verse of his new religion. This poem is in the
form of a dialogue between a milkwhite Hind, representing
the Church of Rome, and a Panther, representing the Church
of England ; and the Hind has of course the best of the dis-
cussion. The author of ' Religio Laici ' and of ' The Spanish
Friar,' could not bring himself to treat the Church to which
he so lately belonged with entire disrespect ; and the Panther
is described as

1 sure the noblest next the Hind,
And fairest creature of the spotted kind;
Oh, could her inborn stains be washed away,
She were too good to be a beast of prey !
How can I praise or blame, and not offend,
Or how divide the frailty from the friend?
Her faults and virtues lie so mixed, that she
Nor wholly stands condemned nor wholly free.'
The various dissenting bodies are introduced into the poem
under the names of different animals. This, the most
imaginative and the longest of Dryden's poems, was published
in April 1687.

Dryden's first ode for St. Cecilia's day was written in
November 1687, at the request of a musical society formed
four years before the celebration of the feast of St. Cecilia,
the guardian saint of music b.

On June 10, 1688, the Queen gave birth to a son, an event
which was hailed with joy by all the friends of the Court,
while the Protestant party declared the child an imposture.
The birth of the Prince was celebrated by Dryden in a poem
entitled 'Britannia Rediviva,' which was very hastily com-
posed, and is one of his least successful efforts.

There was a very short interval between the birth of

b A perfect text of so celebrated a poem is of much literary import-
ance. The editors have generally substituted uprooted for Dryden's
better word unrooted in the line

' And trees unrooted left their place.'

This is one of very many similar corrections in the Globe edition of
Dryden's Poems.

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. XXXV11

James's unfortunate heir and the Revolution, which drove
James into exile, placed William and Mary on the throne, and
destroyed Dryden's prospects of advancement. His newly-
adopted religion made it impossible for him to take the oaths
required of all holders of office, and to recant now would
have been at once indecent and unprofitable. His offices of
Poet Laureate and Historiographer Royal, his place in the
Customs, and his pension of ioo/. a year, were now all lost
by him. It was stated by Prior, and has been often repeated
on his authority, that the Earl of Dorset, who was now
appointed Lord Chamberlain, made the poet an allowance
from his own purse equivalent to the official salary he had
lost. This is a mistake ; but there is no doubt that Dorset
at different times made Dryden handsome presents of money,
and the poet, in his ' Discourse on Satire,' dedicated to Dorset
in 1693, gratefully acknowledges his generosity. Sheffield,
Earl of Mulgrave, was also bountiful to him in his reduced
circumstances.

In his fallen fortunes Dryden turned once more to the
drama. In 1690 he produced two plays. The first was a
tragedy called 'Don Sebastian.' Though one of his best
dramas, it was not very successful, and Dryden attributed the
failure of it to its length, or in his own language, to his
having exceeded ' the proper compass of a play.' A comedy,
'Amphitryon,' produced in the same year, had better suc-
cess. At the time of Charles the Second's death Dryden was
engaged in writing, as a sequel to ' Albion and Albanius,' an
opera, 'King Arthur, or the British Worthy.' This work,
much altered to suit the altered times, was now brought out
with great success. About the representation of his next
play there was some difficulty. The story of ' Cleomenes,
King of Sparta,' was of an exiled king seeking protection at
a foreign court. King William was absent in Holland, and
Mary, the Regent, feeling that the play was disagreeably
suggestive of her father's position at St. Germains, objected
to its being acted. Her objections were, however, overcome
by Dryden's friends, and ' Cleomenes ' was produced in May
1692.

XXXviil BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

Dryden had been seized with a severe fit of illness while
hastening to finish ' Cleomenes/ and he was compelled to call
in the aid of a young friend, Southerne, to finish it for him.
Southerne, Dryden's junior by twenty-eight years, had ac-
quired sudden celebrity by his first play, * The Loyal Brother,
or the Persian Prince,' produced in 1682, when he was only
twenty-three. It had been brought on the stage with a
prologue and epilogue by Dryden; and Dryden again had
written the prologue for Southerne's second play, ' The Dis-
appointment, or the Mother in Fashion/ which had also been
a success. A check came to Southerne's success in 1692,
shortly after Dryden had honoured him by seeking his assist-
ance for * Cleomenes.' His fourth play, the ' Wives' Excuse,'
was not well received on the stage, and Dryden now con-
soled his young friend by some lines of condolence and com-
pliment. He ascribed the want of success to the story and
the absence of a favourite actor : —

' Yet those who blame thy tale commend thy wit,
So Terence plotted, but so Terence writ.
Like his, thy thoughts are true, thy language clean,
Even lewdness is made moral in thy scene.
The hearers may for want of Nokes repine,
But rest secure, the readers will be thine.
Nor was thy laboured drama damned or hissed,
But with a kind civility dismissed.'

One more play, ' Love Triumphant, or Nature will Prevail,'
was produced by Dryden in the beginning of 1694, and he
relinquished play-writing. ' Love Triumphant ' was a failure.
A letter written by one who was evidently a bitter enemy
of Dryden, and who calls him * huffing Dryden/ says that the
play was ' damned by the universal cry of the town.'

'Don Sebastian' was dedicated to the Earl of Leicester,
elder brother of Algernon Sydney; 'Amphitryon' to Sir
William Leveson Gower of Trentham; 'King Arthur' to
George Saville, Marquis of Halifax ; 'Cleomenes' to Lawrence
Hyde, Earl of Rochester, son of the Lord Chancellor
Clarendon, and uncle to Queen Mary; and 'Love Tri-
umphant* to the Earl of Salisbury. These were all friends

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. XXXIX

of the Revolution, and of William and Mary's government,
who, Dryden is careful to say in each of his dedications, had
continued kind to him in his adversity. He endeavoured, he
says, ' to pitch on such men only as have been pleased to own
me in this ruin of my small fortune, who, though they are of a
contrary opinion themselves, yet blame me not for adhering
to a lost cause and judging for myself, what I cannot choose
but judge, so long as I am a patient sufferer and no disturber
of the government.' To Lord Leicester, whose mansion was
near his own residence in Gerrard Street, Dryden writes that
'his best prospect is on the garden of Leicester House,' and
that its owner has more than once offered him his patronage,
' to reconcile him to a world of which his misfortunes have
made him weary.' And in the last of these dedications,
written in 1694, and addressed to the Earl of Salisbury, to
whom he says that his wife was related, he writes, ' You have
been pleased to take a particular notice of me even in this
lowness of my fortunes, to which I have voluntarily reduced
myself, and of which I have no reason to be ashamed.'
Dryden "held himself proudly in his enforced change of cir-
cumstances. King William's government could not favour
him, even if there were the disposition to do so. His Toryism
and his many gibes at the Dutch might have been, and prob-
ably would have been, generously forgiven ; but he could
not recant his new Roman Catholic religion and conform
to the tests required for office. In his poem 'Eleonora,'
written in 1691, in honour of the memory of the Countess
of Abingdon, for which he received a very handsome pe-
cuniary reward of five hundred guineas from the Earl, he
speaks of himself as one

' Who, not by cares or wants of age deprest,
Stems a wild deluge with a dauntless breast.'

Dryden had in 1692 produced, with aid from others, a
translation of the Satires of Juvenal and Persius, to which
he prefixed a 'Discourse on Satire,' addressed to the Earl of
Dorset. Among those who aided him were his two elder
"sons, John and Charles. Dryden himself translated the first,

xl BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

third, sixth, tenth, and sixteenth Satires of Juvenal, and the
whole of Persius. Dryden also wrote a life of Polybius for
a translation by Sir Henry Shere, given to the world in 1692.
A third volume of 'Miscellanies' was published, under Dryden's
editorship, in 1693, and a fourth in 1694. In the last volume
appeared Dryden's translation of the fourth Georgic of Virgil,
and his poem addressed to Sir Godfrey Kneller. This poem
has been always reprinted in an imperfect state ; the omitted
passages are restored in the lately-published Globe edition.
One of the omitted passages, immediately following an
allusion to the first pair in Eden, is of autobiographical
interest : —

' Forgive the allusion ; 'twas not meant to bite,
But Satire will have room, where'er I write.'

There is in this poem an admirable description of a perfect
portrait : —

« Likeness is ever there, but still the best,
Like proper thoughts in lofty language drest.'

Dryden's new friendship with Southerne has been men-
tioned. Through Southerne he became acquainted with
another young dramatist, Congreve, who was also early
famous. Congreve's first play, ' The Old Bachelor,' was
brought out in 1693 ; Dryden had seen it in manuscript, and
declared that he never saw such a good play, and he aided to
adapt it for the stage. Congreve was at this time but twenty-
three years old. A second play was produced by him within
a twelvemonth, 'The Double Dealer,' which did not attain
the brilliant success that had attended Congreve's first effort.
Dryden, who the year before had consoled Southerne under
a similar disappointment, now addressed to Congreve a poem,
which was prefixed to ' The Double Dealer ' when published.
The poem is headed, 'To my dear friend, Mr. Congreve.'
He anticipates in this poem a brilliant future for Congreve,
designates him as the fittest of living writers for the laureate-
ship which he himself had lost, and ends in well-known
beautiful lines by bequeathing to Congreve the care of his
own reputation : —

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xli

• In him all beauties of this age we see,
Etherege his courtship, Southern's purity,
The satire, wit, and strength of Wycherly.
AH this in blooming youth you have achieved,
Nor are your foiled contemporaries grieved;
So much the sweetness of your manners move,
We cannot envy you, because we love.

Oh that your brows my laurel had sustained 1
Well had I been deposed, if you had reigned.

Yet this I prophesy, — Thou shalt be seen,
Though with some short parenthesis between,
High on the throne of wit, and seated there,
Not mine — that's little — but thy laurel wear.
Thy first attempt an early promise made;
That early promise this has more than paid.

Already I am worn with cares and age,
And just abandoning the ungrateful stage;
Unprofitably kept at Heaven's expense,
I live a rent-charge on His providence.
But you, whom every Grace and Muse adorn,
Whom I foresee to better fortune born,
Be kind to my remains ; and oh, defend,
Against your judgment, your departed friend.
Let not the insulting foe my fame pursue,
But shade those laurels which descend to you :
And take for tribute what these lines express,
You merit more, nor could my love do less.'

An air of insincerity is given to the prophecy of the laurel
for Congreve by a similar compliment addressed a few years
later to another young dramatist, George Granville, who was
rich and of noble family, and became afterwards Secretary
of State and a peer, with the title of Lord Lansdowne, and
who was a beneficent friend of Dryden in his last years. A
poem addressed to Mr. Granville in 1690, 'on his excellent
tragedy, called " Heroic Love," ' contains these lines : —

' But since 'tis Nature's law in love and wit,
That youth should reign, and withering age submit,

xlli BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

With less regret those laurels I resign,
Which, dying on my brows, revive on thine.

Thine be the laurel then: thy blooming age
Can best, if any can, support the stage c.'

Dryden renounced the drama in 1694, in order to devote
himself to the translation of Virgil, a work which occupied
him almost exclusively for the next three years. The trans-
lation was published by subscription in 1697, and it was a
success both pecuniarily and in respect of fame. Writing
to his sons a few months after the publication, he says, * My
Virgil succeeds in the world beyond its desert or my repu-
tation,' and he goes on to say that the profits might have
been more had his conscience allowed him to comply with
the wish of his publisher Tonson, and dedicate the work to
the King. The publisher had been so bent on gaining his
point in this matter that he caused the engraving of ^Eneas
to be altered into some likeness of William, in the hope that
Dryden might relent at the last moment. But this wily
stratagem failed, and Dryden's Virgil appeared with three
separate dedications ; of the Pastorals to Lord Clifford, the
son of his early patron, the Lord Treasurer ; of the Georgics
to the Earl of Chesterfield ; and of the ^Eneid, to his old and
kind friend Mulgrave, now Marquis of Normanby. The Virgil
was published by subscription. There were two sets of sub-
scribers: one of five guineas each, and the other of two guineas.
There were 102 of the first class, and 250 of the second. The
profit to Dryden was twelve or thirteen hundred pounds. It
is extremely difficult to arrive at a definite notion of the exact
arrangements between Dryden and Tonson as to profits, and
Malone and other biographers have expended much ingenuity

9 George Powel, one of the principal actors at Drury Lane Theatre,
irritated by taunts at the Drury Lane company in Dryden's poem to
Granville, twitted Dryden with his giving to Granville laurels which he
had given away before, both to Congreve and Southerne. (Preface to
* The Fatal Discovery, or Love in Ruins,' 1698, quoted by Malone, vol. i.
parti, p. 311.)

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xliii

in discussion and conjecture on this subject d. The poet's
relations with his publisher during the progress of his transla-
tion and of the printing of Virgil were anything but pleasant.
Several of Dryden's letters of this period which have been
preserved abound in complaints and accusations against Ton-
son. At one time he has thoughts of leaving him, but upon
trial he finds that ' all of his trade are sharpers, and he not
more than others.' He accuses him of paying him in clipped
and in bad money, and on one occasion he sends him by
Tonson's messenger three insulting lines of poetry, with a
message, 'Tell the dog that he who wrote these lines can
write more/ Tonson must have been startled by this
beginning of a portrait of him : —

'With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair,
With two left legs, and Judas-coloured hair,
And frowsy pores that taint the ambient air6.*

Dryden is said to have begun his translation of Virgil at
the house of his cousin John Driden of Chesterton, and there

d From a positive statement made by one of Dryden's biographers,
the Rev. John Mitford, in Pickering's Aldine edition of Dryden's
Poems, published in 1832, there should be in existence an agreement
dated June 15, 1694, between Dryden and Tonson, attested by Congreve
as one of the witnesses : but Mr. Mitford does not say where the agree-
ment is to be seen, and he makes his statement without giving any
authority. Mr. Mitford says that by this agreement Dryden was to
receive for the Virgil 2OO/., to be paid at stated intervals, and a hundred
copies of the work on large paper, Tonson to pay all expenses, and have
the proceeds of the sale of the small paper copies. But this statement of
the case is not consistent with many passages of Dryden's letters on the
subject, of 1695, 1696, and 1697, which are printed by Malone and
Scott. Dryden's letters, however, are not sufficient to enable us to arrive
at certainty as to his arrangements with his publisher. The subject is
discussed in Malone's Life, in the Rev. Mr. Hooper's, prefixed to the
recent reprint of the Aldine edition, and in the Memoir of the Globe
edition.

e These three lines are introduced into a poem called ' Faction Dis-
played,' ascribed to Mr. Shippen, published after Dryden's death, and are
there quoted as Dryden's description of Tonson, who figures in this poem
as Bibliopole. Pope called Tonson ' left-legged Jacob ' in the Dunciad,
and referred in a note to Dryden's ' two left legs.' This story therefore is
well authenticated.

xliv BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

to have written the first lines with a diamond on a window-
pane. Some part of the work was done at Denham Court
in Buckinghamshire, the seat of Sir William Bowyer, an old
Cambridge friend; and the Seventh Book of the ^Eneid
was translated at Burleigh, the house of the Earl of Exeter,
in Northamptonshire. Dr. Knightly Chetwode supplied the
Life of Virgil and the Preface to the Pastorals, and
Addison wrote the arguments of the books and an Essay
on the Georgics. Among those who recommended the work
to the public by poetical addresses of compliment printed in
the front were George Granville the dramatist, the future
Lord Lansdowne, and Henry St. John, the future celebrated
Lord Bolingbroke.

Amid general congratulation and eulogy, the publication of
Virgil called forth some enemies and detractors. The most
elaborate attack on the translation came from a Norfolk
clergyman, the Rev. Luke Milbourne, neither whose criticism
nor whose name would be remembered but for Dryden's
having pilloried him in some of his subsequent writings f.
The most famous of Dryden's detractors was a younger
kinsman, the celebrated Jonathan Swifts, who never forgetting,
it is said, a discouraging opinion on some of his early poetry
privately given him by Dryden, whose advice he had asked,

f Dryden on two occasions couples Milbourne with Sir Richard Black-
more, the doctor, who attacked his plays : in the Epistle to John
Driden, where Blackmore is Maurus, —

'Wouldst thou be soon dispatched and perish whole,

Trust Maurus with thy life and Milbourne with thy soul;'
and in the preface to the ' Fables,' where he lashes Milbourne unsparingly,
and after replying to Jeremy Collier with some respect, he ends with a
general defiance : ' As for the rest of those who have written against me,
they are such scoundrels that they deserve not the least notice to be
taken of them. Blackmore and Milbourne are only distinguished from
the crowd by being remembered to their infamy.'

* The relationship between Dryden and Swift has not been clearly
ascertained ; but Malone conjectured, with much probability, that Swift's
grandmother, wife of Thomas Swift, vicar of Goodrich in Herefordshire,
was daughter to a brother of Sir Erasmus Dryden, John Dryden's grand-
father. The lady had a brother, Jonathan Dryden, a clergyman ; whence
Swift's Christian name.

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xlv

has sneered at the work and its trio of dedications in his
witty ' Battle of the Books/ The story is told that Swift,
about the year 1692, sent Dryden several Pindaric odes for
perusal, and to obtain his advice as to publication, and that
Dryden returned them, saying, 'Cousin Swift, you will never
be a poet.'

Swift was always ready to sneer at his cousin Dryden.
The translation of Virgil is alluded to disrespectfully in the
dedication of 'The Tale of a Tub.' Some lines. of Swift's
ridicule Will's and his cousin's prefaces : —

4 Put on the critic's brow and sit
At Will's, the puny judge of wit.

Read all the prefaces of Dryden,
! For these our critics much confide in ;

Though merely writ at first for filling
\ To raise the volume's price a shilling.

While Dryden was engaged in translating Virgil, he pub-
lished a translation of Du Fresnoy's Latin poem on the Art
of Painting, to which he prefixed an essay, entitled ' Parallel
of Poetry and Painting.' He wrote also in this period a Life
of Lucian for a translation of Lucian's works, which was
being prepared by Mr. Moyle, Sir Henry Shere, and other
gentlemen, and which was not published till after Dryden's
death. Dryden's great ode, Alexander's Feast, his second ode
for St. Cecilia's day, was written very soon after the com-
pletion of the Virgil, and was sung at the feast of St. Cecilia,
November 22, 1697. It is stated by Derrick, on somewhat
doubtful authority, that Dryden received forty pounds for the
use of this ode on that day. It is likely that he received a
gratuity from the Society for which he composed it ; but on
the other hand, Dryden wrote in September to his sons at
Rome, after he had undertaken to produce this ode for
November, — ' This is troublesome, and no way beneficial ; but
I could not deny the stewards who came in a body to my
house to desire that kindness, one of them being Mr. Bridg-
man, whose parents are your mother's friends.'

xlvi BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

Dryden's three sons were now at Rome ; the two elder had
gone there in the end of 1692, and the youngest followed
them. They were favoured by the Pope, Innocent the
Twelfth, who made the eldest his Chamberlain, gave some
other office in his household to the second, and made the
third an officer of his Guards. A comedy written by Dryden's
second son, John, 'The Husband his Own Cuckold,' was
brought out at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1696,
with a prologue by Congreve and an epilogue by Dryden the
father. Dryden wrote also a preface for the play when pub-
lished, in which he gave his opinion that his son's comedy had
been surpassed by only two living writers, his friends Southerne
and Congreve, and ended characteristically, ' Farewell, reader ;
if you are a father, you will forgive me ; if not, you will when
you are a father.' Sir Robert Howard had taken great
interest in his nephew's play, and had helped to adapt it for
the stage : the play was dedicated to him, and the father's and
uncle's encouragement was happily indicated by a motto
from Virgil —

'Et pater Aeneas et avunculus excitat Hector.'

Sir Robert Howard, Dryden's brother-in-law, with whom in
earlier life he had had a literary controversy and a quarrel, was
now his friend and benefactor, and Dryden mentions in one of
his letters to his sons an intention to refashion for the stage a
play by Sir Robert, ' The Conquest of China by the Tartars/
with an expectation of receiving a hundred pounds for the
work.

The publication of Jeremy Collier's famous work on ' The
Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage,' is unfor-
tunately connected with Dryden's biography. Dryden was a
prominent offender and deservedly a special object of attack.
Collier's work appeared in March 1698. In June Dryden
refers to it, in some lines addressed to Motteux on his play
' Beauty in Distress.' Collier was a clergyman, and Dryden,
whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, had always attacked
all clergies. He affected to consider Collier's anger against
himself as inspired by his attacks on Collier's brotherhood,

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xlvii

and, while confessing faultiness, suggested that his antagonist
exaggerated offence and spread mischief. He does not name
Collier, but he replies to * the Muses' foes/

' But when to common sense they give the lie
And turn distorted words to blasphemy,
They give the scandal; and the wise discern
Their glosses teach an age too apt to learn.
What I have loosely or profanely writ
Let them to fires, their due desert, commit.
Nor, when accused by me, let them complain—
Their faults and not their function I arraign.'

And then in beautiful lines he claims for the drama participa-
tion with the pulpit in moral instruction :

' But let us first reform, and then so live
That we may teach our teachers to forgive ;
Our desk be placed below their lofty chairs,
Ours be the practice, as the precept theirs.
The moral part at least we may divide,
Humility reward, and punish pride ;
Ambition, interest, avarice accuse :
These are the province of the tragic muse.*

There was moderation in this reply, and if Dryden had
stopped here, posterity might have accepted his confession and
apology. But in his very last composition, his epilogue for a
representation for his own benefit, written within a few weeks
before his death, he treats Collier's rebukes in another tone,
throws the blame of his immoral writings on the court of
Charles the Second, and on the brink of the grave jests on
virtue and vice :

' Perhaps the parson stretched a point too far,
When with our theatres he waged a war.
He tells you that this very moral age
Received the first infection from the stage;
But, sure a banished court, with lewdness fraught,
The seeds of open vice returning brought.

The poets, who must live by courts or starve,
Were proud so good a government to serve;

xlviii BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

And mixing with buffoons and pimps profane,
Tainted the stage for some small snip of gain.

The sin was of our native growth, 'tis true;
The scandal of the sin was wholly new,
Misses there were, but modestly concealed;
Whitehall the naked Venus first revealed,
Who standing, as at Cyprus, in her shrine,
The strumpet was adored with rites divine.'

Towards the end of 1698 Dry den began his 'Fables/ or
translations from Chaucer and Boccaccio, which were pub-
lished only a few months before his death, in a folio volume
entitled, ' Tales, Ancient and Modern, Translated into Verse
from Homer, Ovid, Boccaccio and Chaucer; with Original
Poems.' While engaged on this work, Dryden entertained
hopes of obtaining some favour from the government,
chiefly through the good offices of his friend and connexion
Charles Montagu, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He sent
to Montagu for perusal some of the poems designed for this
last of his publications, and he rather pressingly solicited his
patronage. But his hopes were disappointed, and shortly after
he writes to his cousin Mrs. Steward despondingly : 'The
court rather speaks kindly of me than does anything for me,
though they promise largely/ And again, ' I doubt I am in no
condition of having a kindness done me, having the Chancellor
for my enemy.' The Lord Chancellor whom he suspected of
hindering his advancement was the great Lord Somers.

The 'Fables' were published in November 1699, and
Dryden had the gratification of seeing this, his last work, well
received. The epistle to his cousin John Driden appeared
for the first time in this volume, and Dryden thought this
poem ' the best of the whole ' ; and it is an excellent poem.

Dryden's health had now been failing for some time. In the
preface to the 'Fables/ published in November 1699, he speaks
of himself as a cripple in his limbs, and alludes to interruptions
in his work from ' various intervals of sickness.' But he con-
gratulates himself on being as vigorous as ever in the faculties
of his mind, and says that he intends, if longer life and

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xllX

moderate health be granted to him, to translate the whole of
Homer. This design was not accomplished. During the
winter of 1699-1700 his infirmities increased. He had been
long a martyr to gout and gravel. In December the appear-
ance of erysipelas in his legs added to his sufferings, and during
the months of March and April he was mostly confined to his
house by gout. At last mortification set in on one of his legs,
and amputation of the limb was recommended as the only
possible means of averting death, but this operation Dryden
refused to submit to, and on the ist of May 1700 he expired
at his house in Gerrard Street. At the time of his death he
was within three months of completing his sixty-ninth year.
His body was embalmed, and lay in state for several days
at the College of Physicians. Thence it was removed on
May 1 3, and carried with great pomp and with all the honours
of a public funeral to Westminster Abbey, to be buried in
Poet's Corner beside the graves of Chaucer and Cowley.

There appears to be no doubt that Lord Jefferies, son of
the Lord Chancellor Jefferies of bad repute, was principally
instrumental in securing for Dryden the honour of a public
funeral ; and the Earl of Dorset, and Charles Montagu, who
is said to have offered in the first instance to pay the expenses
of a private interment, doubtless zealously seconded the pro-
posal of Jefferies. Garth, a poet of no mean skill, and Presi-
dent of the College of Physicians, placed the College building
at the disposal of Dryden's friends, and he delivered a Latin
oration before the body left the College. Thence some fifty
carriages, filled with distinguished friends, followed the hearse
to Westminster Abbey. Among these would be some who
had been friends from early days, and who for the greater
part of half a century had watched his literary career —
Dorset, Mulgrave (now Marquis of Normanby), Sir Charles
Sedley, and Samuel Pepys; and other younger men, dis-
tinguished in literature, wit and politics, who had been
attracted to him by his fame and by their literary sympathies
—Charles Montagu, already a leading statesman, Laurence
Hyde Earl of Rochester, son of the Lord Chancellor
Clarendon, Southerne, Congreve, Wycherly, Vanbrugh,

d

1 BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

Creech, the translator of Lucretius, Walsh, an accomplished
man of letters, who was afterwards prominent among Pope's
friends, Sir Godfrey Kneller the painter, Betterton the actor,
and the young St. John, destined to a fame brilliant but
irregular under the title of Lord Bolingbroke.

It was expected that Montagu and Dorset would erect a
monument to Dryden in Westminster Abbey, but this expec-
tation was not realized ; and it was not till twenty years after
his death that a monument was placed over his grave. This
was done in 1720 by his old friend Mulgrave, now Duke of
Buckinghamshire, who died a few months after he had dis-
charged this duty to friendship and public desert. Two years
later another monument to the poet and his family was
erected in the church of Tichmarsh, in Northamptonshire,
by his cousin, Mrs. Creed, who describes Dryden, in the elabo-
rate inscription, as 'the celebrated poet and laureat of his
time/ and proceeds to say that ' his bright parts and learn-
ing are best seen in his own excellent writings on various
subjects : we boast that he was bred and had his first learning
here, where he has often made us happy by his kind visits and
most delightful conversation.'

Dryden died without a will. He had little to leave
beyond the small estate at Blakesley, which he had received
from his father, and probably some small landed property
which he had acquired in Wiltshire through his marriage.
The expenses of his mode of living and of his family had
never, in his most prosperous days, been below his income,
and of late years he had had great difficulty, even with kind
aid from many friends, in meeting his expenses. Lady Elizabeth
Dryden, the widow, survived her husband for several years.
Soon after his death she became insane, and she continued
so till her death in 1714. The three sons all died before
their mother. The eldest, Charles, was drowned in the
Thames, near Datchet, in August 1704 ; John, the second
son, had died at Rome, in January 1701; and Erasmus
Henry, the youngest, died in December 1710, a few months
after he had succeeded to the family baronetcy on the death
of his cousin, Sir John Dryden.

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. H

In person Dryden was short and stout, with a ruddy face.
Pope, who when a boy saw Dryden once in his old age,
describes him as plump and fresh-coloured, with a down
look. His hair is said by an enemy to have inclined to redh,
but it early became gray, and he wore it long and flowing.
He had a large mole on one of his cheeks. His eyes were
far apart. In a poem on a portrait of him, written by a
friend in 1700, his eye is called 'sleepy.' His expressive face,
without being regularly handsome, was winning. He says of
himself in one of his early writings, not meaning probably all
that is said, ' My conversation is slow and dull, my humour
saturnine and reserved ; in short, I am none of those who
endeavour to break jests in company or make repartees1/
An adversary took him at his word, and has made him say, —

' Nor wine nor love could ever make me gay,
To writing bred, I knew not what to say.' k

But if his conversation was not brilliant, it was agreeable
among friends of congenial spirits, and he was a favourite
companion. We learn from Pope, through Spence, how
Dryden's days were generally passed. He lived for many
years before his death in Gerrard Street, Soho, where he
died. The room in which he sat and wrote was on the
ground floor, looking into the street. He spent his mornings
in writing, dined early with his family, and after dinner went
to Will's coffee-house in Russell Street, where he spent the
evening. ' It was Dryden,' says Pope, ' who made Will's
coffee-house the great resort for the wits of his time1.'
At Will's Dryden was, during the latter part of his life,
a literary monarch, and he was a genial and kind-
hearted ruler. There is a story, not quite certain to be true,
that he gave the boy Pope a shilling for translating the
story of Pyramus and Thisbe. Dean Lockier describes his
goodnatured way of taking an interruption and correction

h Tom Brown, in • The Reasons for Mr. Bayes changing his Religion.
» Defence of the Essay on Dramatic Poesy.
k A Satire to his Muse.
1 Spence's Anecdotes.

da

Hi BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

from himself, a youth of seventeen, and a stranger to Dryden,
while he was discoursing at Will's with authority on his own
1 Mac Flecknoe.' * If anything of mine is good/ said Dryden,
* it is my " Mac Flecknoe," and I shall value myself the more
on it, because it is the first piece of ridicule written in heroics.'
The boy Lockier said audibly that * Mac Flecknoe ' was a
fine poem, but not the first written that way. Dryden
turned to him and asked ' how long he had been a dealer in
poetry ? ' and added smilingly, * pray, sir, what is that you did
imagine to have been writ so before?' Lockier named
Boileau's 'Lutrin' and Tassoni's 'Secchia Rapita.' 'It is true,'
said Dryden, * I had forgot them ' : and as Dryden left the
coffee-house that evening, he went up to the youth who had
corrected him, and asked him to come and visit him. Dry-
den's kindness to younger authors is one of his distinguishing
attributes, and one of several proofs of an amiable nature.
It was thus that he attracted and retained the friendship of
Southerne, Gongreve, and many others, whose respectful
attention and genial kindness solaced and softened the sor-
rows of his latter years.

Congreve, to whom, in lines which have been already
quoted, Dryden bequeathed the care of his reputation, has
left an account of Dryden's character which is true, if not
complete. ' He was of a nature,' says Congreve, ' exceed-
ingly humane and compassionate; easily forgiving injuries,
and capable of a prompt and sincere reconciliation with them
who had offended him His friendship, where he pro-
fessed it, went much beyond his professions, and I have been
told of strong and generous instances of it, by the persons
themselves who received them ; though his hereditary means

was little more than a bare competency He was of very

easy, I may say of very pleasing access, but something slow, and
as it were diffident in his advances to others. He had some-
thing in his nature that abhorred intrusion into any society
whatsoever. . . .To the best of my knowledge and observation
he was of all the men that ever I knew one of the most
modest, and the most easily to be discountenanced in his
approaches to his superiors or his equals.'

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. liii

But Dryden's character was a mixed one, and faults must
be mentioned. His indecent writing, his changes in politics
and in religion, and his unscrupulousness in praise and blame,
are parts of his life and character which cannot be explained
away or defended. If on some occasions, after Jeremy Collier's
severe rebukes, he has made in his last years some apology for
indecencies in his plays, it cannot be said that he has ever ex-
pressed himself with becoming contrition. Nor is his gross
writing confined to his plays. Lord Macaulay has most truly
said that many of his translations, whether from Virgil or
Boccaccio, are full of interpolated and exaggerated indecencies.
The translations from Lucretius deserve the same reproof.
In his very last work, the volume of Fables, his tale from
Boccaccio of Sigismunda and Guiscardo, beautifully told in
verse the most melodious, is overcharged with licentious
sentiments which are not Boccaccio's, but Dryden's : and yet
in the preface to these Fables he could write : 'In general,
I will only say that I have written nothing which savours of
immorality or profaneness, at least, I am not conscious to
myself of any such intention. If there happen to be found
an immoral expression or a thought too wanton, they all
crept into my verses through inadvertency.' Indecent
thoughts came to him naturally, and he could not restrain
the prurient impulse. There are many passages of contem-
porary writers, more or less unfriendly, which, after due
allowance for spite and exaggeration, render certain what
would otherwise be probable, that Dryden's licentious
writing was a sign of licentiousness of life. He knew not
political consistency, and he did not regard decency in
some of his transitions. His sudden change at the Restora-
tion from flattery of the Protectorate to adulation of the
Stuarts cannot possibly be explained by honest conviction.
To acquiesce as a good subject in the new order of things,
and make the best of the monarchy which the national will
had restored, would have been becoming ; but for the poetical
eulogist of the Commonwealth and of Cromwell to devote him-
self immediately to poetical praises of Charles and Clarendon,
and to laments over the Commonwealth, which but a year

liv BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

before he had lauded and rejoiced in, is discreditable, and
must have been an interested change. Almost all his virulent
abuse of Shaftesbury, the great leader of opposition in the
latter years of the reign of Charles the Second, is in flagrant
contradiction to his former praises of the policy of the Cabal
Ministry, the war with Holland, and Clifford, Shaftesbury's
colleague of the Cabal government. It would be difficult in
any case to give Dryden credit for perfect sincerity and dis-
interestedness in his adoption of the Roman Catholic religion,
after James the Second became king ; but his antecedents and
general character make this altogether impossible. Dryden's
temperament was by no means of that sort which engenders
sudden conversions. He was not impulsive, and he had no
enthusiasm. His clear sharp intellect, and his strong critical
faculty, made it easy for him to see faults and flaws, and pro-
tected him against all fanaticism. His ' Religio Laici ' is the
mature expression of a faith which is more of the head than
of the heart : it is the religion of a calm and clear-sighted
man, who has reasoned himself into accepting a quantum ot
theology, and desires as little dogma as possible. How great
the leap from this philosophical religion to Romanism, when
a Roman Catholic king ascended the throne !

Dryden, in his literary character, is known to the multitude
chiefly as a poet, but he is to be regarded and remembered
also as a prose writer, as a translator, and as the leading wit
in his own age of London literary society. His place among
English poets is high, if not the highest, in the second class,
the first being that of Chaucer and Spenser, Shakespeare
and Milton, in whom genius transcends art, and the ' faculty
divine ' is ever apparent above subject and execution, and
whose poetry streams from a 'full-welling fountain-head*
of inner imagination. In Dryden, as in Pope, we admire
reason, language, argument, wit, and art. Dryden is a great
master of language and of verse. He is the most vigorous
and polished of satirists, combining subtle refinement with
fervour ; and he is unequalled as a reasoner in rhyme. * Ab-
salom and Achitophel,' superior as a poem, yet presents no
samples of his satirical invective equal to * The Medal,' and

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. Iv

1 Mac Flecknoe.' * Religio Laid,' ' The Hind and the Pan-
ther,' and likewise ' Absalom and Achitophel,' display his
power of arguing in verse, another fine example of which is to
be found in the theological discussion of Maximin, Apollonius,
and St. Catherine, in 'Tyrannic Love.' The fierce satirist
was an exquisite song-writer ; some of the songs interspersed
in his plays are gems of art, which have been much hidden
from view by the deterring grossness of many of the plays, and
of many of the songs themselves, which has prevented them
from being separately collected. Dryden as an author would
seem to have had two natures. He could be correct and
dignified when he chose, and it was easy and seemed pleasant
to him to be gross and coarse. The polished style of most
of his Prologues and Epilogues for the academical audience
of Oxford University is in marked contrast with the prurient
indecency of the addresses which he prepared for the loose,
dissolute courtiers and vulgar cits of London. Gracefully
in one of the Oxford Prologues has he discriminated between
the University and the Town.

1 Our poet, could he find forgiveness here,
Would wish it rather than a plaudit there.
He owns no crown from those Praetorian bands,
But knows that right is in this Senate's hands.
Kings make their poets whom themselves think fit,
But 'tis your suffrage makes authentic wit.' m

The plays of Dryden, as plays, contribute little to his fame.
They were mostly hastily composed, and written as money-
making tasks. But there are scattered through them many
beautiful passages of pure and noble thought, and many lines
which fasten on the memory and are quoted from mouth to
mouth, often without its being known whence they come —
an unfailing test of poetic power. The following, which has
been often quoted, and cannot be quoted too often, is one of
many ' beauties ' of ' Aurengzebe ' : —

m Prologue to the University of Oxford, 1673, p. 420 of Globe edition.

Ivi BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

1 When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat,
Yet fooled with hope, men favour the deceit,
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay :
To-morrow 's falser than the former day,
Lies worse, and while it says we shall be blest
With some new joys, cuts off what we possest.
Strange cozenage 1 none would live past years again,
Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain,
And from the dregs of life think to receive
What the first sprightly running could not give.
I'm tired of waiting for this chymic gold,
Which fools us young and beggars us when old.'

To one of Dryden's plays, the Second Part of ' The Con-
quest of Granada,' we owe —

' Forgiveness to the injured does belong,
But they ne'er pardon who have done the wrong.'

To another play, ' All for Love/ we owe —

' Men are but children of a larger growth :
Our appetites as apt to change as theirs,
And full as craving too, and full as vain.'

It is Almanzor in the First Part of 'The Conquest of
Granada ' who exclaims, addressing the King Boabdallin —

' Obeyed as sovereign by thy subjects be,
But know that I alone am king of me:
I am as free as Nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.'

Candiope, in ' The Maiden Queen,' describes the retired
courtier longing to return to court —

• Those who like you have once in courts been great,
May think they wish, but wish not, to retreat.
They seldom go but when they cannot stay;
As losing gamesters throw the dice away.
E'en in that cell where you repose would find,
Visions of court will haunt your restless mind ;
And glorious dreams stand ready to restore,
The pleasing shades of all you had before.'

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. Ivii

Maximin says, in ' Tyrannic Love,' —

' Fate's dark recesses we can never find,
But Fortune at some hours is always kind;
The lucky have whole days, which still they choose,
The unlucky have but hours, and these they lose.'

These are a few specimens of many passages of power and
beauty in Dryden's little-read and generally inferior plays.
His faculty of placing words is wonderful, and conspicuous in
prose as well as in poetry. He was specially fitted for a
translator. The faults of his translation of Virgil are mostly
faults of haste and carelessness. Wanting money, he finished
in three years what he rightly told Tonson that it would
require seven years to do well.

We learn from Pope, through Dean Lockier, that Dryden
made Will's coffee-house, in Russell Street, Govent Garden,
the great resort of all the wits in London, and that some years
after his death Addison carried the wits away from Will's to
another coffee-house in the same street, and on the opposite
side of it, Button's n. Pope, who was but twelve years old
when Dryden died, had been taken once to Will's in Dryden's
last year to get a sight of the poet. Addison succeeded to
Dryden's critical chair, and the mantle of the poet fell in a
little time on Pope, who regarded Dryden as his teacher of
versification, and whose first poems, the Pastorals, were pub-
lished nine years after Dryden's death.

Notices of the early editions of the poems comprised in
this volume are subjoined, as important in connexion with
the history of the text : —

Heroic Stanzas on Oliver Cromwell. The date on
the title-page of the first edition is 1659, but it was doubtless
published before the end of 1658. There are two editions
of 1659. The first was probably published with two other

n Spence's Anecdotes, p. 113.

Ivili BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

poems on the same subject by Waller and Sprat, the volume
having the title, * Three Poems upon the Death of his late
Highness, Oliver, Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and
Ireland, written by Mr. Edm. Waller, Mr. Jo. Dryden, Mr.
Sprat of Oxford : London, Printed by William Wilson, and
are to be sold in Well-yard, near Little St. Bartholomew's
Hospital: 1659.' Dryden's poem is printed first in this col-
lection, with the separate heading of ' Heroic Stanzas conse-
crated to the Glorious Memory of his Most Serene and
Renowned Highness, Oliver, late Lord Protector of the Com-
monwealth, &c. Written after the celebration of his Funeral.'
In the other edition of 1659 Dryden's poem is printed alone;
it has the same publisher. There is considerable difference
of spelling and punctuation between the two, but none of
words. During the reigns of Charles the Second and James
the Second, Dryden did not republish this poem, or include
it in any list of his works; but it was reprinted in 1682 by a
political foe. In the reign of William, Jacob Tonson, Dryden's
publisher and friend, republished the poem in 1695 from the
separate edition of 1659. It was afterwards printed in the
first volume of the ' State Poems,' with several corruptions of
the text; and this corrupt reprint was reproduced in the
edition of the 'Miscellany Poems' in 1716. Several later
editors followed this corrupt copy. The editions of 1659
contain the correct text.

Astrsea Redux. This was originally published in 1660 in
folio, by Henry Herringman. Dryden's name is printed
Driden on the title-page. The poem was republished in
1688, in quarto, by Tonson, together with the Panegyric on
Charles the Second at the Coronation, the Address to Lord
Chancellor Clarendon on New Year's Day, 1662, and the
Annus Mirabilis; and then in 1688. The spelling Driden was
preserved on the title-page of 'Astraea Redux.' The text
of the folio edition of 1660 is perfectly to be trusted.

Annus Mirabilis. The first edition of 1667 is a little
volume in small octavo, * printed by Henry Herringman at the
Anchor of the Lower Walk of the New Exchange, 1667.'

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. Hx

Dryden, who was not in the habit of careful correction of
the press, printed a list of errata on this occasion, with the
following notice : —

4 To THE READERS.

• Notwithstanding the diligence which has been used in my absence,
some faults have escaped the press ; and I have so many of my own to
answer for, that I am not willing to be charged with those of the printer.
I have only noted the gravest of them, not such as by false stops have
confounded the sense, but such as by mistaken words have corrupted it.'

This little volume, which Sir Walter Scott does not appear
to have seen, contains the best text. Tonson's reprint, in
quarto, 1688, contains several changes of text, which are
generally changes for the worse; a few, however, may be
accepted as improvements. The text of 1688 was literally
followed in the edition of the * Miscellany Poems ' of 17 16. The
poem is printed in this volume, as also in the Globe edition,
with the title-page of the first edition, which has not been
generally given by modern editors, and also with Dry den's
own marginal indications, which have been often omitted.

Absalom and Achitophel. The first edition was in folio,
published by Jacob Tonson in November 1681. A second
edition appeared in quarto before the end of December, with
several minor changes, and two considerable additions. This
second edition is authoritative for the text. Seven more
editions were published in Dryden's lifetime. That in the
folio volume of Dryden's poems, published by Tonson after
Dryden's death in 1701, is there called the tenth edition.

Religio Laid. The first edition is in quarto, published
in November 1682; there was a second edition in the same
year, and a third in 1683. The poem was not again reprinted
till it appeared in Tonson's folio edition of Dryden's poems
of 1701.

The Hind and the Panther. This poem was first pub-
lished in quarto in April 1687, and a second edition was
published in the same year. The Revolution of 1688 stopped

Ix BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.

the demand for the poem. The reprint in Tonson's folio
volume of 1701 is called there the third edition. There are
several errors in this last reprint ; the correct text is to be
sought in either of the two editions of 1687.

A bibliographical notice of the ' Miscellany Poems/ edited
by Dryden, is added, much confusion arising out of the con-
tinued connexion of his name with volumes of the series and
with whole collections published after his death. The first
volume of * Miscellanies ' was published by Dryden in 1684 ;
there is a second edition of this volume, 1692, and a third,
1702. There is no important difference between the first
and second editions, but the third is considerably different.
The second volume of Dryden's 'Miscellanies' was called
' Sylvae,' and published in 1685. A third edition of this volume
was published in 1702. The third volume of Dryden's series
of ' Miscellanies ' was called ' Examen Poeticum,' and appeared
in 1693 ; there was a second edition in 1706. The fourth
and last of Dryden's volumes is called ' Annual Miscellany for
the year 1694 ' ; and there is a second edition of 1708.

After Dryden's death a fifth volume was published by Jacob
Tonson in 1704, and a sixth in 1709, with neither of which
Dryden had anything to do. Pope's Pastorals were first
published in the sixth volume.

An edition of ' Miscellany Poems,' in six volumes, was pub-
lished by Tonson in 1716. This is quite different, both by
addition and omission, from the previous sets of six volumes,
and has no just title to the name, by which it goes, of Dryden's
Miscellany Poems. There are later reprints of these so-
called Dryden's Miscellany Poems of 1716.

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

A POEM.

' Si propius stes
espial maps.'

(HORACE, An Poet. 361.)

G 9

TO THE READER.

'Tis not my intention to make an apology for my poem :
some will think it needs no excuse, and others will receive
none. The design, I am sure, is honest ; but he who draws
his pen for one party must expect to make enemies of the
other. For wit and fool are consequents of Whig and Tory ; 5
and every man is a knave or an ass to the contrary side.
There's a treasury of merits in the Fanatic church as well
as in the Papist, and a pennyworth to be had of saintship,
honesty, and poetry, for the lewd, the factious, and the
blockheads ; but the longest chapter in Deuteronomy has not 10
curses enough for an Anti-Bromingham. My comfort is,
their manifest prejudice to my cause will render their judg-
ment of less authority against me. Yet if a poem have a
genius, it will force its own reception in the world ; for there
is a sweetness in good verse, which tickles even while it hurts ; I5
and no man can be heartily angry with him who pleases him
against his will. The commendation of adversaries is the
greatest triumph of a writer, because it never comes unless
extorted. But I can be satisfied on more easy terms: if I
happen to please the more moderate sort, I shall be sure 20
of an honest party and, in all probability, of the best judges ;
for the least concerned are commonly the least corrupt. And
I confess I have laid in for those, by rebating the satire,
where justice would allow it, from carrying too sharp an
edge. They who can criticize so weakly as to imagine I have 25
done my worst, may be convinced at their own cost that I
can write severely with more ease than I can gently. I have
but laughed at some men's follies, when I could have de-
claimed against their vices ; and other men's virtues I have
commended as freely as I have taxed their crimes. And now, 30
if you are a malicious reader, I expect you should return

86 ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

upon me that I affect to be thought more impartial than
I am ; but if men are not to be judged by their professions,
God forgive you commonwealth's-men for professing so plau-
sibly for the government. You cannot be so unconscionable

5 as to charge me for not subscribing of my name ; for that
would reflect too grossly upon your own party, who never
dare, though they have the advantage of a jury to secure
them. If you like not my poem, the fault may possibly be
in my writing, though 'tis hard for an author to judge against

10 himself; but more probably 'tis in your morals, which cannot
bear the truth of it. The violent on both sides will condemn
the character of Absalom, as either too favourably or too
hardly drawn ; but they are not the violent whom I desire to
please. The fault on the right hand is to extenuate, palliate,

1 5 and indulge ; and, to confess freely, I have endeavoured to
commit it. Besides the respect which I owe his birth, I have
a greater for his heroic virtues ; and David himself could not
be more tender of the young man's life, than I would be
of his reputation. But since the most excellent natures are

20 always the most easy and, as being such, are the soonest
perverted by ill counsels, especially when baited with fame
and glory, it is no more a wonder that he withstood not the
temptations of Achitophel than it was for Adam not to have
resisted the two devils, the serpent and the woman. The con-

25 elusion of the story I purposely forbore to prosecute, because

I could not obtain from myself to show Absalom unfortunate.

The frame of it was cut out but for a picture to the waist ; and

if the draught be so far true, it is as much as I designed..

Were I the inventor, who am only the historian, I should

30 certainly conclude the piece with the reconcilement of
Absalom to David. And who knows but this may come to
pass ? Things were not brought to an extremity where I left
the story : there seems yet to be room left for a composure ;
hereafter there may only be for pity. I have not so much as

35 an uncharitable wish against Achitophel, but am content to
be accused of a good-natured error, and to hope with Origen,
that the Devil himself may at last be saved. For which
reason, in this poem, he is neither brought to set his house in

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 87

order, nor to dispose of his person afterwards as he in wisdom
shall think fit. God is infinitely merciful ; and his vicegerent
is only not so, because he is not infinite.

The true end of satire is the amendment of vices by
correction. And he who writes honestly is no more an 5
enemy to the offender than the physician to the patient, when
he prescribes harsh remedies to an inveterate disease ; for
those are only in order to prevent the chirurgeon's work
of an Ense rescindendum, which I wish not to my very enemies.
To conclude all ; if the body politic have any analogy to 10
the natural, in my weak judgment, an act of oblivion were as
necessary in a hot distempered state as an opiate would be in
a raging fever.

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

IN pious times, ere priestcraft did begin,

Before polygamy was made a sin,

When man on many multiplied his kind,

Ere one to one was cursedly confined,

When nature prompted and no law denied 5

Promiscuous use of concubine and bride,

Then Israel's monarch after Heaven's own heart

His vigorous warmth did variously impart

To wives and slaves, and, wide as his command,

Scattered his Maker's image through the land. 10

Michal, of royal blood, the crown did wear,

A soil ungrateful to the tiller's care:

Not so the rest; for several mothers bore

To god-like David several sons before.

But since like slaves his bed they did ascend, 15

No true succession could their seed attend.

Of all this numerous progeny was none

So beautiful, so brave, as Absalon :

Whether, inspired by some diviner lust,

His father got him with a greater gust, ao

Or that his conscious destiny made way

By manly beauty to imperial sway.

Early in foreign fields he won renown

With kings and states allied to Israel's crown;

In peace the thoughts of war he could remove 25

And seemed as he were only born for love.

Whate'er he did was done with so much ease,

In him alone 'twas natural to please ;

dfts^-ih+^FJ

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 89

His motions all accompanied with grace,

And Paradise was opened in his face. 30

With secret joy indulgent David viewed

His youthful image in his son renewed;

To all his wishes nothing he denied

And made the charming Annabel his bride.

What faults he had (for who from faults is free?) 35

His father could not or he would not see.

Some warm excesses, which the law forbore,

Were construed youth that purged by boiling o'er;

And Amnon's murder by a specious name

Was called a just revenge for injured fame. 40

Thus praised and loved, the noble youth remained,

While David undisturbed in Sion reigned.

But life can never be sincerely blest ;

Heaven punishes the bad, and proves the best.

The Jews, a headstrong, moody, murmuring race 45

As ever tried the extent and stretch of grace;

God's pampered people, whom, debauched with case,

No king could govern nor no God could please ;

Gods they had tried of every shape and size

That godsmiths could produce or priests devise; 50

These Adam-wits, too fortunately free,

Began to dream they wanted liberty ;

And when no rule, no precedent was found

Of men by laws less circumscribed and bound,

They led their wild desires to woods and caves 55

And thought that all but savages were slaves.

They who, when Saul was dead, without a blow ^A*"WvwUJL

Made foolish Ishbosheth the crown forego; (\*JplLk*J| I

Who banished Da^d did from Hebron bring, VJUXa/^

And with a general shout proclaimed him King ; " 60

Those very Jews who at their very best

Their humour more than loyalty exprest,

Now wondered why so long they had obeyed

An idol monarch which their hands had made;

Thought they might ruin him they could create 65

Or melt him to that golden calf, a State.

'w>t~>C

90 ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

But these were random bolts; no formed design

Nor interest made the factious crowd to join :

The sober part of Israel, free from stain,

Well knew the value of a peaceful reign ; 70

And looking backward with a wise affright

Saw seams of wounds dishonest to the sight,

In contemplation of whose ugly scars

They cursed the memory of civil wars.

The moderate sort of men, thus qualified, 75

Inclined the balance to the better side;

And David's mildness managed it so well,

The bad found no occasion to rebel.

But when to sin our biassed nature leans,

The careful Devil is still at hand with means 80

And providently pimps for ill desires ;

The good old cause, revived, a plot requires.

Plots true or false are necessary things,

To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings.

The inhabitants of old Jerusalem (L^-^-tr^ 85

Were Jebusites; the town so called from them,
And theirs the native right.
But when the chosen people grew more strong,
The rightful cause at length became the wrong ;
And every loss the men of Jebus bore, 90

They still were thought God's enemies the more.
Thus worn and weakened, well or ill content,

Submit they must to David's government :

Impoverished and deprived of all command,

Their taxes doubled as they lost their land; 95

And, what was harder yet to flesh and blood,

Their gods disgraced, and burnt like common wood.

This set the heathen priesthood in a flame,

For priests of all religions are the same.

Of whatsoe'er descent their godhead be, 100

Stock, stone, or other homely pedigree,

In his defence his servants are as bold,

As if he had been born of beaten gold.

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

The_Jewish Rabbins^ though their enemies,

In this conclude them honest men and wise: 105

For 'twas their duty, all the learned think,

To espouse his cause by whom they eat and drink.

From hence began that Plot, the nation's curse,

Bad in itself, but represented worse,

Raised in extremes, and in extremes decried, 1 1 o

With oaths affirmed, with dying vows denied,

Not weighed or winnowed by the multitude,

But swallowed in the mass, unchewed and crude.

Some truth there was, but dashed and brewed with lies

To please the fools and puzzle all the wise : 115

Succeeding times did equal folly call

Believing nothing or believing all.

The Egyptian rites the Jebusites embraced,

Where gods were recommended by their taste;

Such savoury deities must needs be good 120

As served at once for worship and for food.

By force they could not introduce these gods,

For ten to one in former days was odds:

So fraud was used, the sacrificer's trade;

Fools are more hard to conquer than persuade. 125

Their busy teachers mingled with the Jews

And raked for converts even the court and stews:

Which Hebrew priests the more unkindly took,

Because the fleece accompanies the flock.

Some thought they God's anointed meant to slay 130

By guns, invented since full many a day :

Our author swears it not; but who can know

How far the Devil and Jebusites may go?

This plot, which failed for want of common sense,

Had yet a deep and dangerous consequence; 135

For as, when raging fevers boil the blood,

The standing lake soon floats into a flood,

And every hostile humour which before

Slept quiet in its -channels bubbles o'er;

So several factions from this first ferment 140

Work up to foam and threat the government.

92 ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

Some by their friends, more by themselves thought wise,

Opposed the power to which they could not rise.

Some had in courts been great and, thrown from thence,

Like fiends were hardened in impenitence. 145

Some by their Monarch's fatal mercy grown

From pardoned rebels kinsmen to the throne

Were raised in power and public office high;

Strong bands, if bands ungrateful men could tie.

Of these the false Achitophel was first, 150

A name to all succeeding ages curst :

For close designs and crooked counsels fit,

Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit,

Restless, unfixed in principles and place,

In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace; 155

A fiery soul, which, working out its way,

Fretted the pigmy body to decay

And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.

A daring pilot in extremity,

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high, 160

He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,

Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied

And thin partitions do their bounds divide;

Else, why should he, with wealth and honour blest, 165

Refuse his age the needful hours of rest ?

Punish a body which he could not please,

Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease ?

And all to leave what with his toil he won

To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son, 170

Got, while his soul did huddled notions try, \V

And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.

In friendship false, implacable in hate, 6

Resolved to ruin or to rule the state ;

To compass this the triple bond he broke

The pillars of the public saTety shook,

And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke;

Then, seized with fear, yet still affecting fame,

Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name.

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 93

So easy still it proves in factious times 180

With public zeal to cancel private crimes.

How safe is treason and how sacred ill,

Where none can sin against the people's will,

Where crowds can wink and no offence be known,

Since in another's guilt they find their own! 185

Yet fame deserved no enemy can grudge ;

The statesman we abhor, but praise the judge.

In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abbejthdin [^4*.

With more discerning eyes or hands more clean,

Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress, 190

Swift of despatch and easy of access.

Oh! had he been content to serve the crown

With virtues only proper to the gown,

Or had the rankness of the soil been freed

From cockle that oppressed the noble seed, 195

David for him his tuneful harp had strung

And Heaven had wanted one immortal song.

But wild ambition loves to slide, not stand,

And fortune's ice prefers to virtue's land.

Achitophel, grown weary to possess aoo

A lawful fame and lazy happiness,

Disdained the golden fruit to gather free

And lent the crowd his arm to shake the tree.

Now, manifest of crimes contrived long since,

He stood at bold defiance with his Prince, 305

Held up the buckler of the people's cause

Against the crown, and skulked behind the laws.

The wished occasion of the Plot he takes ;

Some circumstances finds, but more he makes;

By buzzing emissaries fills the ears aio

Of listening crowds with jealousies and fears

Of arbitrary counsels brought to light,

And proves the King himself a Jebusite.

Weak arguments! which yet he knew full well

Were strong with people easy to rebel. 215

For governed by the moon, the giddy Jews

Tread the same track when she the prime renews :

94 ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

And once in twenty years their scribes record,

By natural instinct they change their lord.

Achitophel still wants a chief, and none 220

Was found so fit as warlike Absalon. & Jj^ th |VWr

Not that he wished his greatness to create, Q

For politicians neither love nor hate;

But, for he knew his title not allowed

Would keep him still depending on the crowd, 335

That kingly power, thus ebbing out, might be

Drawn to the dregs of a democracy.

Him he attempts with studied arts to please

And sheds his venom in such words as these:

'Auspicious prince, at whose nativity 330

Some royal planet ruled the southern sky,
Thy longing country's darling and desire,
Their cloudy pillar and their guardian fire,
Their second Moses, whose extended wand
Divides the seas and shows the promised land, 335

Whose dawning day in every distant age
Has exercised the sacred prophet's rage,
The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme,
The young men's vision and the old men's dream,
Thee Saviour, thee the nation's vows confess, 340

And never satisfied with seeing bless:
Swift unbespoken pomps thy steps proclaim,
And stammering babes are taught to lisp thy name.
How long wilt thou the general joy detain,
Starve and defraud the people of thy reign? 245

Content ingloriously to pass thy days,
Like one of virtue's fools that feeds on praise ;
Till thy fresh glories, which now shine so bright,
Grow stale and tarnish with our daily sight.
Believe me, royal youth, thy fruit must be 250

Or gathered ripe, or rot upon the tree.
Heaven has to all allotted, soon or late,
Some lucky revolution of their fate :
Whose motions if we watch and guide with skill,

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 95

(For human good depends on human will,) 355

Our fortune rolls as from a smooth descent

And from the first impression takes the bent;

But, if unseized, she glides away like wind

And leaves repenting folly far behind.

Now, now she meets you with a glorious prize 260

And spreads her locks before her as she flies.

Had thus old David, from whose loins you spring,

Not dared, when fortune called him to be King,

At Gath an exile he might still remain,

And Heaven's anointing oil had been in vain. 265

Let his successful youth your hopes engage,

But shun the example of declining age.

Behold him setting in his western skies,

The shadows lengthening as the vapours rise ;

He is not now, as when, on Jordan's sand, 27°

The joyful people thronged to see him land,

Covering the beach and blackening all the strand,

But like the Prince of Angels, from his height

Comes tumbling downward with diminished light:

Betrayed by one poor plot to public scorn, 275

(Our only blessing since his curst return,)

Those heaps of people, which one sheaf did bind,

Blown off and scattered by a puff of wind.

What strength can he to your designs oppose,

Naked of friends, and round beset with foes? 280

If Pharaoh's doubtful succour he should use,

A foreign aid would more incense the Jews;

Proud Egypt would dissembled friendship bring,

Foment the war, but not support the King ;

Nor would the royal party e'er unite 285

With Pharaoh's arms to assist the Jebusite ;

Or, if they should, their interest soon would break

And with such odious aid make David weak.

All sorts of men, by my successful arts

Abhorring kings, estrange their altered hearts 290

From David's rule: and 'tis the general cry,

Religion, commonwealth, and liberty.

<)6 ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL*

If you, as champion of the public good,

Add to their arms a chief of royal blood,

What may not Israel hope, and what applause 295

Might such a general gain by such a cause ?

Not barren praise alone, that gaudy flower,

Fair only to the sight, but solid power;

And nobler is a limited command,

Given by the love of all your native land, 300

Than a successive title, long and dark,

Drawn from the mouldy rolls of Noah's ark.'

(What cannot praise effect in mighty minds,
When flattery soothes and when ambition blinds?
Desire of power, on earth a vicious weed, 305

Yet sprung from high is of celestial seed ;
In God 'tis glory, and when men aspire,
'Tis but a spark too much of heavenly fire. /
The ambitious youth, too covelojis..r>£Jajne, "H^
Too full of angel's metal in his frame, 310

Unwarily was led from virtue's ways,
Made drunk with honour and debauched with praise.
Half loth and half consenting to the ill,
For loyal blood within him struggled still,
He thus replied: 'And what pretence have I 315

To take up arms for public liberty ?
My father governs with unquestioned right,
The faith's defender and mankind's delight,
Good, gracious, just, observant of the laws ;
And Heaven by wonders has espoused his cause. 320

Whom has he wronged in all his peaceful reign ?
Who sues for justice to his throne in vain ?
What millions has he pardoned of his foes
Whom just revenge did to his wrath expose ?
Mild, easy, humble, studious of our good, 335

Inclined to mercy and averse from blood.
If mildness ill with stubborn Israel suit,
His crime is God's beloved attribute.
What could he gain his people to betray

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 97

Or change his right for arbitrary sway? 33°

Let haughty Pharaoh curse with such a reign
His fruitful Nile, and yoke a servile train.
If David's rule Jerusalem displease,
The dog-star heats their brains to this disease.
Why then should I, encouraging the bad, 335

Turn rebel and run popularly mad?
Were he a tyrant, who by lawless might
Oppressed the Jews and raised the Jebusite,
Well might I mourn; but nature's holy bands
Would curb my spirits and restrain my hands; 340

The people might assert their liberty,
But what was right in them were crime in me.
His favour leaves me nothing to require,
Prevents my wishes and outruns desire;
What more can I expect while David lives ? 345

All but his kingly diadem he gives:
And that'— But there he paused, then sighing said,
' Is justly destined for a worthier head ;
For when my father from his toils shall rest
And late augment the number of the blest, 350

His lawful issue shall the throne ascend,
Or the collateral line, where that shall end.
His brother, though oppressed with vulgar spite,
Yet dauntless and secure of native right,
Of every royal virtue stands possest, 355

Still dear to all the bravest and the best.
His courage foes, his friends his truth proclaim,
His loyalty the King, the world his fame.
His mercy even the offending crowd will find,
For sure he comes of a forgiving kind. 360

Why should I then repine at Heaven's decree
Which gives me no pretence to royalty?
Yet oh that Fate, propitiously inclined,
Had raised my birth or had debased my mind,
To my large soul not all her treasure lent, 365

And then betrayed it to a mean descent !
I find, I find my mounting spirits bold,

H

98 ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

And David's part disdains my mother's mould.

Why am I scanted by a niggard birth?

My soul disclaims the kindred of her earth, 370

And, made for empire, whispers me within,

Desire of greatness is a god-like sin.'

Him staggering so when Hell's dire agent found,
While fainting virtue scarce maintained her ground,
He pours fresh forces in, and thus replies: 375

'The eternal God, supremely good and wise,
Imparts not these prodigious gifts in vain.
What wonders are reserved to bless your reign !
Against your will your arguments have shown,
Such virtue's only given to guide a throne. 380

Not that your father's mildness I contemn,
But manly force becomes the diadem.
'Tis true he grants the people all they crave,
And more perhaps than subjects ought to have :
For lavish grants suppose a monarch tame 385

And more his goodness than his wit proclaim.
But when should people strive their bonds to break,
If not when kings are negligent or weak ?
Let him give on till he can give no more,
The thrifty Sanhedrin shall keep him poor; 390

And every shekel which he can receive
Shall cost a limb of his prerogative.
To ply him with new plots shall be my care,
Or plunge him deep in some expensive war;
Which when his treasure can no more supply, 395

He must with the remains of kingship buy.
His faithful friends our jealousies and fears
Gall Jebusites and Pharaoh's pensioners,
Whom when our fury from his aid has torn,
He shall be naked left to public scorn. 400

The next successor, whom I fear and hate,
My arts have made obnoxious to the State,
Turned all his virtues to his overthrow,
And gained our elders to pronounce a foe.

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 99

His right for sums of necessary gold 405

Shall first be pawned, and afterwards be sold;
Till time shall ever-wanting David draw
To pass your doubtful title into law.
If not, the people have a right supreme
To make their kings, for kings are made for them. 410
All empire is no more than power in trust,
Which, when resumed, can be no longer just.
Succession, for the general good designed,
In its own wrong a nation cannot bind:
If altering that the people can relieve, 415

Better one suffer than a nation grieve.
The Jews well know their power: ere Saul they chose
God was their King, and God they durst depose.
Urge now your piety, your filial name,
A father's right and fear of future fame, 420

The public good, that universal call,
To which even Heaven submitted, answers all.
Nor let his love enchant your generous mind;
'Tis Nature's trick to propagate her kind.
Our fond begetters, who would never die, 425

Love but themselves in their posterity.
Or let his kindness by the effects be tried,
Or let him lay his vain pretence aside.
God said, He loved your father ; could He bring
A better proof than to anoint him King? 430

It surely showed, He loved the shepherd well
Who gave so fair a flock as Israel.
Would David have you thought his darling son?
What means he then to alienate the crown?
The name of godly he may blush to bear; 435

'Tis after God's own heart to cheat his heir.
He to his brother gives supreme command,
To you a legacy of barren land,
Perhaps the old harp on which he thrums his lays
Or some dull Hebrew ballad in your praise. 440

Then the next heir, a prince severe and wise,
Already looks on you with jealous eyes,
H a

TOO ABSALOM AND ACHTTOPHEL.

Sees through the thin disguises of your arts,

And marks your progress in the people's hearts;

Though now his mighty soul its grief contains, 445

He meditates revenge who least complains;

And like a lion, slumbering in the way

Or sleep dissembling, while he waits his prey,

His fearless foes within his distance draws,

Constrains his roaring and contracts his paws, 450

Till at the last, his time for fury found,

He shoots with sudden vengeance from the ground,

The prostrate vulgar passes o'er and spares,

But with a lordly rage his hunters tears ;

Your case no tame expedients will afford, 455

Resolve on death or conquest by the sword,

Which for no less a stake than life you draw,

And self-defence is Nature's eldest law.

Leave the warm people no considering time,

For then rebellion may be thought a crime. 460

Prevail yourself of what occasion gives,

But try your title while your father lives ;

And, that your arms may have a fair pretence,

Proclaim you take them in the King's defence ;

Whose sacred life each minute would expose 465

To plots from seeming friends and secret foes.

And who can sound the depth of David's soul?

Perhaps his fear his kindness may control :

He fears his brother, though he loves his son,

For plighted vows too late to be undone. 470

If so, by force he wishes to be gained,

Like women's lechery to seem constrained.

Doubt not : but, when he most affects the frown,

Commit a pleasing rape upon the crown.

Secure his person to secure your cause : 475

They who possess the Prince possess the laws.'

He said, and this advice above the rest
With Absalom's mild nature suited best ;
Unblamed of life (ambition set aside),

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. IOI

Not stained with cruelty nor puffed with pride, 480

How happy had he been, if Destiny

Had higher placed his birth or not so high !

His kingly virtues might have claimed a throne

And blessed all other countries but his own ;

But charming greatness since so few refuse, 485

'Tis juster to lament him than accuse.

Strong were his hopes a rival to remove,

With blandishments to gain the public love,

To head the faction while their zeal was hot,

And popularly prosecute the plot. 490

further this, Achitophel unites
The malcontents of all the Israelites,
Whose differing parties he could wisely join
For several ends to serve the same design:
The best, (and of the princes some were such,) 495

Who thought the power of monarchy too much,
Mistaken men and patriots in their hearts,
Not wicked, but seduced by impious arts ;
By these the springs of property were bent
And wound so high they cracked the government. 500
The next for interest sought to embroil the state,
To sell their duty at a dearer rate,
And make their Jewish markets of the throne,
Pretending public good to serve their own.
Others thought kings an useless heavy load, 505

Who cost too much and did too little good.
These were for laying honest David by
On principles of pure good husbandry.
With them joined all the haranguers of the throng
That thought to get preferment by the tongue. 510

Who follow next a double danger bring,
Not only hating David, but the King ;
The Solymaean rout, well versed of old
In godly faction and in treason bold,

Cowering and quaking at a conqueror's sword, 5r5

But lofty to a lawful prince restored,
Saw with disdain an Ethnic plot begun

102 ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

And scorned by Jebusites to be outdone.

Hot Levites headed these; who pulled before

From the ark, which in the Judges' days they bore, 520

Resumed their cant, and with a zealous cry

Pursued their old beloved theocracy,

Where Sanhedrin and priest enslaved the nation

And justified their spoils by inspiration ;

For who so fit for reign as Aaron's race, 525

If once dominion they could found in grace?

These led the pack ; though not of surest scent,

Yet deepest mouthed against the government.

A numerous host of dreaming saints succeed

Of the true old enthusiastic breed: 530

'Gainst form and order they their power employ,

Nothing to build and all things to destroy.

But far more numerous was the herd of such

Who think too little and who talk too much.

These out of mere instinct, they knew not why, 535

Adored their fathers' God and property,

And by the same blind benefit of Fate

The Devil and the Jebusite did hate:

Born to be saved even in their own despite,

Because they could not help believing right. 540

Such were the tools ; but a whole Hydra more

Remains of sprouting heads too long to score.

Some of their chiefs were princes of the land ;

In the first rank of these did Zimri stand,

A man so various that he seemed to be 545

Not one, but all mankind's epitome:

Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,

Was everything by starts and nothing long ;

But in the course of one revolving moon

Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon ; 550

Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,

Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.

Blest madman, who could every hour employ

With something new to wish or to enjoy !

Railing and praising were his usual themes, 555

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 1 03

And both, to show his judgment, in extremes :

So over violent or over civil

That every man with him was God or Devil.

In squandering wealth was his peculiar art ;

Nothing went unrewarded but desert. 560

Beggared by fools whom still he found too late,

He had his jest, and they had his estate.

He laughed himself from Court ; then sought relief

By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief:

For spite of him, the weight of business fell 565

On Absalom and wise Achitophel ;

Thus wicked but in will, of means bereft,

He left not faction, but of that was left.

Titles and names 'twere tedious to rehearse
Of lords below the dignity of verse. 570

Wits, warriors, commonwealth's-men were the best ;
Kind husbands and mere nobles all the rest.
And therefore in the name of dulness be
The well-hung Balaam and cold Caleb free ;
And canting Nadab let oblivion damn 575

Who made new porridge for the paschal lamb.
Let friendship's holy band some names assure.
Some their own worth, and some let scorn secure.
Nor shall the rascal rabble here have place
Whom kings no titles gave, and God no grace : 580

Not bull-faced Jonas, who could statutes draw
To mean rebellion and make treason law.
But he, though bad, is followed by a worse,
The wretch who Heaven's anointed dared to curse ;
Shimei, whose youth did early promise bring 585

Of zeal to God and hatred to his King,
Did wisely from expensive sins refrain
And never broke the Sabbath but for gain :
Nor ever was he known an oath to vent
Or curse, unless against the government. 590

Thus heaping wealth by the most ready way
Among the Jews, which was to cheat and pray,
The City, to reward his pious hate

IO4 ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

Against his master, chose him magistrate.
His hand a vare of justice did uphold, 595

His neck was loaded with a chain of gold.
During his office treason was no crime,
The sons of Belial had a glorious time;
For Shimei, though not prodigal of pelt",
Yet loved his wicked neighbour as himself. 600

When two or three were gathered to declaim
Against the monarch of Jerusalem,
Shimei was always in the midst of them :
And, if they cursed the King when he was by,
Would rather curse than break good company. 605

If any durst his factious friends accuse,
He packed a jury of dissenting Jews ;
Whose fellow-feeling in the godly cause
Would free the suffering saint from human laws :
For laws are only made to punish those 610

Who serve the King, and to protect his foes.
If any leisure time he had from power,
Because 'tis sin to misemploy an hour,
His business was by writing to persuade
That kings were useless and a clog to trade : 615

And that his noble style he might refine,
No Rechabite more shunned the fumes of wine.
Chaste were his cellars, and his shrieval board
The grossness of a city feast abhorred :
His cooks with long disuse their trade forgot ; 620

Cool was his kitchen, though his brains were hot.
Such frugal virtue malice may accuse;
But sure 'twas necessary to the Jews:
For towns once burnt such magistrates require
As dare not tempt God's providence by fire. 625

With spiritual food he fed his servants well,
But free from flesh that made the Jews rebel:
And Moses' laws he held in more account
Lj'or forty days of fasting in the mount.
To speak the rest, who better are forgot, 630

Would tire a well-breathed witness of the plot.

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 105

Yet, Corah, thou shall from oblivion pass;

Erect thyself, thou monumental brass,

High as the serpent of thy metal made,

While nations stand secure beneath thy shade. 635

What though his birth were base, yet comets rise

From earthy vapours, ere they shine in skies.

Prodigious actions may as well be done

By weaver's issue as by prince's son.

This arch-attester for the public good 640

By that one deed ennobles all his blood.

Who ever asked the witnesses' high race

Whose oath with martyrdom did Stephen grace?

Ours was a Levite, and as times went then,

His tribe were God Almighty's gentlemen. 645

Sunk were his eyes, his voice was harsh and loud,

Sure signs he neither choleric was nor proud :

His long chin proved his wit, his saint-like grace

A church vermilion and a Moses' face.

His memory, miraculously great, 650

Gould plots exceeding man's belief repeat ;

Which therefore cannot be accounted lies,

For human wit could never such devise.

Some future truths are mingled in his book,

But where the witness failed, the prophet spoke : 655

Some things like visionary flights appear;

The spirit caught him up, the Lord knows where ;

And gave him his Rabbinical degree

Unknown to foreign University.

His judgment yet his memory did excel, 660

Which pieced his wondrous evidence so well

And suited to the temper of the times,

Then groaning under jebusitic crimes.

Let Israel's foes suspect his heavenly call

And rashly judge his writ apocryphal ; 665

Our laws for such affronts have forfeits made,

He takes his life who takes away his trade.

Were I myself in witness Corah's place,

The wretch who did me such a dire disgrace

106 ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

Should whet my memory, though once forgot, 670

To make him an appendix of my plot.

His zeal to Heaven made him his Prince despise,

And load his person with indignities.

But zeal peculiar privilege affords,

Indulging latitude to deeds and words: 675

And Corah might for Agag's murder call,

In terms as coarse as Samuel used to Saul.

What others in his evidence did join,

The best that could be had for love or coin,

In Corah's own predicament will fall, 680

For Witness is a common name to all.

Surrounded thus with friends of every sort,
Deluded Absalom forsakes the court;
Impatient of high hopes, urged with renown,
And fired with near possession of a crown. 685

The admiring crowd are dazzled with surprise
And on his goodly person feed their eyes.
His joy concealed, he sets himself to show,
On each side bowing popularly low,

His looks, his gestures, and his words he frames 690

And with familiar ease repeats their names.
Thus formed by nature, furnished out with arts,
He glides unfelt into their secret hearts.
Then with a kind compassionating look,
And sighs, bespeaking pity ere he spoke, 695

Few words he said, but easy those and fit,
More slow than Hybla-drops and far more sweet.

'I mourn, my countrymen, your lost estate,
Though far unable to prevent your fate :
Behold a banished man, for your dear cause 700

Exposed a prey to arbitrary laws !
Yet oh that I alone could be undone,
Cut off from empire, and no more a son !
Now all your liberties a spoil are made,
Egypt and Tyrus intercept your trade, 705

And Jebusites your sacred rites invade.

ABSALOM AND ACH1TOPHEL. 107

My father, whom with reverence yet I name,

Charmed into ease, is careless of his fame,

And, bribed with petty sums of foreign gold,

Is grown in Bathsheba's embraces old; 710

Exalts his enemies, his friends destroys,

And all his power against himself employs.

He gives, and let him give, my right away ;

But why should he his own and yours betray?

He, only he can make the nation bleed, 715

And he alone from my revenge is freed.

Take then my tears (with that he wiped his eyes),

'Tis all the aid my present power supplies :

No court- informer can these arms accuse ;

These arms may sons against their fathers use. 720

And 'tis my wish, the next successor's reign

May make no other Israelite complain.'

Youth, beauty, graceful action seldom fail,
But common interest always will prevail;
And pity never ceases to be shown 725

To him who makes the people's wrongs his own.
The crowd that still believe their kings oppress
With lifted hands their young Messiah bless:
Who now begins his progress to ordain
With chariots, horsemen, and a numerous train; 730

From east to west his glories he displays
And, like the sun, the promised land surveys.
Fame runs before him as the morning star,
And shouts of joy salute him from afar ;
Each house receives him as a guardian god 735

And consecrates the place of his abode.
But hospitable treats did most commend
Wise Issachar, his wealthy western friend.
This moving court that caught the people's eyes,
And seemed but pomp, did other ends disguise; 740

Achitophel had formed it, with intent
To sound the depths and fathom, where it went,
The people's hearts, distinguish friends from foes,

108 ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

And try their strength before they came to blows.

Yet all was coloured with a smooth pretence 745

Of specious love and duty to their prince.

Religion and redress of grievances,

Two names that always cheat and always please,

Are often urged ; and good king David's life

Endangered by a brother and a wife. 750

Thus in a pageant show a plot is made,

And peace itself is war in masquerade.

Oh foolish Israel! never warned by ill!

Still the same bait, and circumvented still!

Did ever men forsake their present ease, 755

In midst of health imagine a disease,

Take pains contingent mischiefs to foresee,

Make heirs for monarchs, and for God decree ?

What shall we think? Can people give away

Both for themselves and sons their native sway? 760

Then they are left defenceless to the sword

Of each unbounded, arbitrary lord;

And laws are vain by which we right enjoy,

If kings unquestioned can those laws destroy.

Yet if the crowd be judge of fit and just, 765

And kings are only officers in trust,

Then this resuming covenant was declared

When kings were made, or is for ever barred.

If those who gave the sceptre could not tie

By their own deed their own posterity, 770

How then could Adam bind his future race ?

How could his forfeit on mankind take place?

Or how could heavenly justice damn us all

Who ne'er consented to our father's fall?

Then kings are slaves to those whom they command 775

And tenants to their people's pleasure stand.

Add that the power, for property allowed,

Is mischievously seated in the crowd;

For who can be secure of private right,

If sovereign sway may be dissolved by might? 780

Nor is the people's judgment always true :

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 109

The most may err as grossly as the few,

And faultless kings run down by common cry

For vice, oppression, and for tyranny.

What standard is there in a fickle rout, 785

Which, flowing to the mark, runs faster out?

Nor only crowds but Sanhedrins may be

Infected with this public lunacy,

And share the madness of rebellious times,

To murder monarchs for imagined crimes. 790

If they may give and take whene'er they please,

Not kings alone, the Godhead's images,

But government itself at length must fall

To nature's state, where all have right to all.

Yet grant our lords, the people, kings can make, 795

What prudent men a settled throne would shake ?

For whatsoe'er their sufferings were before,

That change they covet makes them suffer more.

All other errors but disturb a state,

But innovation is the blow of fate. 800

If ancient fabrics nod and threat to fall,

To patch the flaws and buttress up the wall,

Thus far 'tis duty : but here fix the mark ;

For all beyond it is to touch our ark.

To change foundations, cast the frame anew, 805

Is work for rebels who base ends pursue,

At once divine and human laws control,

And mend the parts by ruin of the whole.

The tampering world is subject to this curse,

To physic their disease into a worse. 810

Now what relief can righteous David bring ?
How fatal 'tis to be too good a king !
Friends he has few, so high the madness grows ;
Who dare be such must be the people's foes.
Yet some there were even in the worst of days; 815

Some let me name, and naming is to praise.

In this short file Barzillai first appears,
Barzillai, crowned with honour and with years.

110 ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

Long since the rising rebels he withstood

In regions waste beyond the Jordan's flood: 820

Unfortunately brave to buoy the state,

But sinking underneath his master's fate.

In exile with his godlike prince he mourned,

For him he suffered, and with him returned.

The court he practised, not the courtier's art : 825

Large was his wealth, but larger was his heart,

Which well the noblest objects knew to chuse,

The fighting warrior, and recording Muse.

His bed could once a fruitful issue boast ;

Now more than half a father's name is lost. 830

His eldest hope, with every grace adorned,

By me, so Heaven will have it, always mourned

And always honoured, snatched in manhood's prime

By unequal fates and Providence's crime :

Yet not before the goal of honour won, 835

All parts fulfilled of subject and of son ;

Swift was the race, but short the time to run.

Oh narrow circle, but of power divine,

Scanted in space, but perfect in thy line!

By sea, by land, thy matchless worth was known, 840

Arms thy delight, and war was all thy own:

Thy force infused the fainting Tyrians propped,

And haughty Pharaoh found his fortune stopped.

Oh ancient honour! oh unconquered hand,

Whom foes unpunished never could withstand! 845

But Israel was unworthy of thy name :

Short is the date of all immoderate fame.

It looks as Heaven our ruin had designed,

And durst not trust thy fortune and thy mind.

Now, free from earth, thy disencumbered soul 850

Mounts up, and leaves behind the clouds and starry

pole:

From thence thy kindred legions mayest thou bring
To aid the guardian angel of thy King.
Here stop, my Muse, here cease thy painful flight;
No pinions can pursue immortal height : 855

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. Ill

Tell good Barzillai thou canst sing no more,

And tell thy soul she should have fled before :

Or fled she with his life, and left this verse

To hang on her departed patron's hearse ?

Now take thy steepy flight from heaven, and see 860

If thou canst find on earth another he :

Another he would be too hard to find;

See then whom thou canst see not far behind.

Zadoc the priest, whom, shunning power and place,

His lowly mind advanced to David's grace. 865

With him the Sagan of Jerusalem,

Of hospitable soul and noble stem ;

Him of the western dome, whose weighty sense

Flows in fit words and heavenly eloquence.

The Prophets' sons, by such example led, 870

To learning and to loyalty were bred:

For colleges on bounteous kings depend,

And never rebel was to arts a friend.

To these succeed the pillars of the laws,

Who best could plead, and best can judge a cause. 875

Next them a train of loyal peers ascend ;

Sharp-judging Adriel, the Muses' friend,

Himself a Muse : in Sanhedrin's debate

True to his Prince, but not a slave of state ;

Whom David's love with honours did adorn 880

That from his disobedient son were torn.

Jotham of piercing wit and pregnant thought,

Endued by nature and by learning taught

To move assemblies, who but only tried

The worse a while, then chose the better side, 885

Nor chose alone, but turned the balance too,

So much the weight of one brave man can do.

Hushai, the friend of David in distress,

In public storms of manly stedfastness ;

By foreign treaties he informed his youth 890

And joined experience to his native truth.

His frugal care supplied the wanting throne,

Frugal for that, but bounteous of his own :

112 ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

'Tis easy conduct when exchequers flow,

But hard the task to manage well the low. 895

For sovereign power is too depressed or high,

When kings are forced to sell or crowds to buy.

Indulge one labour more, my weary Muse,

For Amiel : who can Amiel's praise refuse ?

Of ancient race by birth, but nobler yet 900

In his own worth and without title great:

The Sanhedrin long time as chief he ruled,

Their reason guided and their passion cooled:

So dexterous was he in the Crown's defence,

So formed to speak a loyal nation's sense, 905

That, as their band was Israel's tribes in small,

So fit was he to represent them all.

Now rasher charioteers the seat ascend,

Whose loose careers his steady skill commend :

They, like the unequal ruler of the day, 910

Misguide the seasons and mistake the way,

While he, withdrawn, at their mad labour smiles

And safe enjoys the sabbath of his toils.

These were the chief, a small but faithful band
Of worthies in the breach who dared to stand 915

And tempt the united fury of the land.
With grief they viewed such powerful engines bent
To batter down the lawful government.
A numerous faction, with pretended frights,
In Sanhedrins to plume the regal rights; 920

The true successor from the Court removed ;
The plot by hireling witnesses improved.
These ills they saw, and, as their duty bound,
They showed the King the danger of the wound;
That no concessions from the throne would please, 925
But lenitives fomented the disease ;
That Absalom, ambitious of the crown,
Was made the lure to draw the people down ;
That false Achitophel's pernicious hate
Had turned the plot to ruin Church and State ; 930

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 113

The council violent, the rabble worse;

That Shimei taught Jerusalem to curse. - A

With all these loads of injuries opprest, ^^Cvy^jf
And long revolving in his careful breast
The event of things, at last his patience tired, 935

Thus from his royal throne, by Heaven inspired,
The godlike David spoke ; with awful fear
His train their Maker in their master hear.

'Thus long have I, by native mercy swayed,
My wrongs dissembled, my revenge delayed ; 940

So willing to forgive the offending age;
So much the father did the king assuage.
But now so far my clemency they slight,
The offenders question my forgiving right.
That one was made for many, they contend ; 945

But 'tis to rule, for that's a monarch's end.
They call my tenderness of blood my fear,
Though manly tempers can the longest bear.
Yet since they will divert my native course,
'Tis time to show I am not good by force. 950

Those heaped affronts that haughty subjects bring
Are burdens for a camel, not a king.
Kings are the public pillars of the State,
Born to sustain and prop the nation's weight :
If my young Samson will pretend a call 955

To shake the column, let him share the fall;
But oh that yet he would repent and live!
How easy 'tis for parents to forgive !
With how few tears a pardon might be won
From nature, pleading for a darling son ! 960

Poor pitied youth, by my paternal care
Raised up to all the height his frame could bear!
Had God ordained his fate for empire born,
He would have given his soul another turn :
Gulled with a patriot's name, whose modern sense 965
Is one that would by law supplant his prince ;

I

\^f M

*

114 ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

The people's brave, the politician's tool;

Never was patriot yet but was a fooi.

Whence comes it that religion and the laws

Should more be Absalom's than David's cause ? 970

His old instructor, ere he lost his place,

Was never thought endued with so much grace.

Good heavens, how faction can a patriot paint !

My rebel ever proves my people's saint.

Would they impose an heir upon the throne? 975

Let Sanhedrins be taught to give their own.

A king's at least a part of government,

And mine as requisite as their consent :

Without my leave a future king to choose

Infers a right the present to depose. 980

True, they petition me to approve their choice :

But Esau's hands suit ill with Jacob's voice.

My pious subjects for my safety pray,

Which to secure, they take my power away.

From plots and treasons Heaven preserve my years, 985

But save me most from my petitioners.

Unsatiate as the barren womb or grave,

God cannot grant so much as they can crave.

What then is left but with a jealous eye

To guard the small remains of royalty ? 990

The law shall still direct my peaceful sway,

And the same law teach rebels to obey:

Votes shall no more established power control,

Such votes as make a part exceed the whole.

No groundless clamours shall my friends remove 995

Nor crowds have power to punish ere they prove;

For gods and godlike kings their care express

Still to defend their servants in distress.

Oh that my power to saving were confined !

Why am I forced, like Heaven, against my mind 1000

/To make examples of another kind?
Must I at length the sword of justice draw ?
Oh curst effects of necessary law !
ow ill my fear they by my mercy scan!

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 11^

Beware the fury of a patient man. 1005

Law they require, let Law then show her face;

They could not be content to look on Grace,

Her hinder parts, but with a daring eye

To tempt the terror of her front and die.

By their own arts, 'tis righteously decreed, 1010

Those dire artificers of death shall bleed.

Against themselves their witnesses will swear

Till, viper-like, their mother-plot they tear,

And suck for nutriment that bloody gore

Which was their principle of life before. 1015

Their Belial with their Beelzebub will fight;

Thus on my foes my foes shall do me right.

Nor doubt the event; for factious crowds engage

In their first onset all their brutal rage.

Then let them take an unresisted course; 1020

Retire and traverse, and delude their force :

But when they stand all breathless, urge the fight

And rise upon them with redoubled might :

For lawful power is still superior found, 1024

When long driven back at length it stands the ground.'

He said. The Almighty, nodding, gave consent;
And peals of thunder shook the firmament.
Henceforth a series of new time began,
The mighty years in long procession ran;
Once more the godlike David was restored, 1030

And willing nations knew their lawful lord.

NOTES

Preface.

P. 85, 1. 5. Whig and Tory. These two names, so familiar to us,
were new when Absalom and Achitophel was written. They were first
applied in 1679 in tne famous controversy about the Exclusion Bill.
Whig is a word of Scotch origin, Tory of Irish. Whig is explained

I 2

NOTES.

in two ways : Roger North says that it meant corrupt and sour whey
(Examen, p. 321) ; Bishop Burnet derives it from tvhiggamor, a driver,
from whiggam, an exclamation in use in driving horses (Hist, of Own
Time, 1. 43). Anyhow, the name of Whigs came to be given to the
Scottish Covenanters. It was first applied in 1648 in Sc9tland. Tories,
according to Roger North, were ' the most "despicable savages among
the wild Irish.' Irishmen, as Roman Catholics, were generally favour-
able to the Duke of York ; thus his friends were called Tories. The
opponents of the Court were Whigs.

P. 85. 1. 8. When Dryden wrote Papist, his editors, from Broughton
downward, have printed Popish.

1. 1 1 . Anti-Bromingham. l Bromingham ' was a cant term of the
time for a Whig. Birmingham was famous for base and counterfeit
coinage ; a ' Birmingham groat ' was a current phrase for base coin.
Roger North says that the Tories nicknamed their adversaries 'Bir-
mingham Protestants, alluding to the false groats struck at that place.'

1. 13. a genius. Most editors, including Scott, have omitted the a,
spoiling the sentence.

1. 23. rebating the satire. Rebate, an obsolete word, means to blunt.
' The keener edge of battle to rebate.'

Palamon and Arcite, Bk. ii. 1. 502.
' One who never feels

The wanton stings and motions of the sense,
But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge
With profits of the mind, steady and just.'

Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act i. Sc. 4.

' Let no defeat
Your sprightly courage and attempts rebate.'

Oldham, Satire iii.
P. 86. 1. 3. Commonwealthsmen, i.e. republicans.

1. 14. The fault on the right hand. Compare 'an error of the
better hand,' in Cymon and Iphigenia, 237.

1.33. composure here means 'arrangement,' 'reconciliation.' Dryden
uses compostire for ' composition ' in his poem to Sir Robert Howard :
'So in your verse a native sweetness dwells
Which shames composure and its art excels.'

P. 87. 1. 9. Ense rescindenduw. Ovid has 'ense recidendum' (Metam.
i. 191).

The Poem.

It will be most convenient for the reader to preface the notes to the
poem with an alphabetical key to the names in the allegory. This key
is part of the one published by Tonson, Dryden's publisher, as key to

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 26 1

this poem and to the Second Part, the most of which was written by
Nahum Tate in the Miscellany Poems, vol. ii. ed. 1716.

Abbethdin, Lord Chancellor.
/ Absalom, Duke of Monmouth.
JAchitophel, Earl of Shaftesbury.

Adriel, Earl of Mulgrave.

Agag, Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey.

Amiel, Mr. (afterwards Sir Edward) Seymour.

Annabel, Duchess of Monmouth.

Balaam, Earl of Huntingdon.

Barzillai, Duke of Ormond.

Bathsheba, Duchess of Portsmouth.

Caleb, Lord Grey of Wark.

Corah, Titus Gates.
J David, King Charles II.

Egypt, France.

Ethnic Plot, Popish Plot.

Hebrew Priests, Church of England clergymen.

Hebron, Scotland.

Ishbosheth, Richard Cromwell.

Israel, England.

Issachar, Thomas Thynne of Longleat.

Jebusites, Papists.

Jerusalem, London.

Jewish Rabbins, Doctors of the Church of England.

Jonas, Sir William Jones.

Jotham, Marquis of Halifax.

Michal, Queen Catharine.

Nadab, Lord Howard of Escrick.

Pharaoh, Louis XIV, King of France.

Sagan of Jerusalem, Bishop of London.

Sanhedrin, Parliament.

Saul, Oliver Cromwell.

Shimei, Slingsby Bethel.

Sion, London.

Solymean rout, the London rabble.

Tyre, Holland.

Uzza, John Hall, commonly called Jack Hall.

Western Dome, Westminster Abbey.

Zadoc, Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Zaken, member of parliament.

Ziloah, Sir John Moore.
J Zimri, Duke of Buckingham.

2<52 NOTES.

1. 7. Charles II, who is David in this poem, is described as ' Israel's
monarch after Heaven's own heart,' as David is in Scripture. ' The
Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart.' (i Sam. xiii. 14.)
' I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart,
which shall fulfil my will.' (Acts xiii. 22.) Charles had already been
compared to David in Astrgea Redux. 11. 79, 80.

1. 17. this, changed to the by Broughton, and the error copied by
following editors, including Scott.

1. 18. Absalon. So spelt here and in line 221 for the rhyme, in the
early editions ; elsewhere always Absalom. The Duke of Monmouth,
here called Absalom, was the son of Charles by Lucy Walters, and
born at Rotterdam, April 9, 1649.

1. 19. inspired by. In the first edition it was with.

1. 30. Compare with this line Pope's

* And Paradise was opened in the wild.' Eloisa to Abelard, 1 33.

1. 34. Annabel, Duchess of Monmouth, was Countess of Buccleuch
in her own right, and was married to Monmouth in 1665. The name
of Scott was afterwards given to Monmouth, and he was created Duke
of Buccleuch. The Duchess of Monmouth was an early patron and
constant friend of Dryden. He dedicated to her the play of The Indian
Emperor, published in 1667. In the Vindication of the Duke of Guise
(1683) Dryden calls her* the patroness of my unworthy poetry '; and
in his Dedication of King Arthur to Lord Halifax, in 1691, he says
that the Duchess of Monmouth had read the play in manuscript and
recommended it to Queen Mary ; and he calls the Duchess * my first
and best patroness.'

1. 39. Amnoris murder. This is probably a reference to an attack,
which Monmouth was believed to have instigated, on Sir John Coventry
in 1670, by some officers and men of Monmouth's troop of horseguards,
in revenge for a sarcasm uttered in the House of Commons about the
King's amours. Coventry's nose was slit with a penknife. The House
of Commons took up the affair very warmly, and a new act was passed,
making it a capital felony to wound with intention to maim or dis-
figure, which went by the name of the Coventry Act. There was indeed
no murder in this case, but Dryden probably desired to avoid precise
identification.

1. 43. sincerely blest. See note on Annus Mirabilis, stanza 209, on
this use of sincerely, meaning ' without alloy.'

*11. 52-56. An allusion to the 'state of nature' which Hobbes and
other political writers of the period supposed to have existed before
states and commonwealths were founded. In this state of nature all
men were equal, and there was no government, but a war of every one
against every one else. ' There are many places,' says Hobbes, ' where

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 263

they live so now. For the savage people in many places of America
. . . live at this day in that brutish manner.'

* 1. 59. Hebron means Scotland. Charles II was crowned king in
Scotland, Jan. I, 1651; in England not till April, 1661. So David
reigned first seven years and six months in Hebron, and then thirty-three
years in Jerusalem. (2 Sam. v. 5.)

1. 65. State means here a republic.

1. 92. worn and weakened, and changed by Derrick to or ; the error
copied by following editors, including Scott.

1. 112. Not weighed or winnowed. Derrick substituted nor for or,
which has been followed by most editors, including Scott.

1. 117. Compare the lines on the Popish Plot in The Hind and
Panther, iii. 719-722.

1. 1 18. Egyptian rites. Egypt, in this poem, stands for France,
and the Egyptian rites are the Roman Catholic rites prevailing in
France.

1. 121. And\n. first edition, instead of As.

1. 150. Achitophel, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury.
Dryden's subsequent poem of The Medal, not included in this volume,
should be read, for a longer and more elaborate and severe attack on
Shaftesbury. He had been Lord Chancellor in 1672-73. Dismissed
from the chancellorship in November 1673, he was made President of
the Privy Council in April 1679, on the reorganization of that body by
the King to conciliate the parliamentary opposition. He was, however,
removed from that office a few months after. Shaftesbury was now in
the Tower,' on a charge of high treason : he was apprehended at his
house in London, July 2, 1681. After many delays, his trial came on
in November, a few days after the publication of this poem, and the
grand jury threw out the bill.

* 11. 150-200. Coleridge in his Table Talk makes the following
romarks on Dryden's method of drawing characters, ' You will find this
a good gauge or criterion of genius, — whether it progresses and evolves,
or only spins upon itself. Take Dryden's Achitophel and Zimri ; every
line adds to or modifies the character, which is, as it were, abuilding
up to the very last verse ; whereas in Pope's Timon, &c. the first two or
three couplets contain all the pith of the character, and the twenty or
thirty lines that follow are so much evidence or proof of overt acts of
jealousy, or pride, or whatever it may be that is satirised/

1. 152. counsel'in first edition, instead of counsels.

I. 154. principle in first edition, instead of principles :

II. 155-157. A correspondent of Notes and Queries, December 7,
1850 (vol. i, p. 468), has supplied the two following quotations in illus-
tration of this triplet on Shaftesbury's fiery soul fretting his pigmy body

264 NOTES.

and o'er-informing the tenement of clay. * He (the Duke of Alva) was
.one of a lean body and visage, as if his eager soul, biting for anger at
the clay of his body, desired to fret a passage through it.' (Fuller's
Profane State.)

' The purest soul that e'er was sent

Into a clayey tenement.' Carew.

1. 163. Great wits, &c. ' Nullum fit magnum ingenium sine mixtura
dementiae.' (Seneca, De Tranq. Anim. c. xv. s. 77.)

1. 167. The same idea of ill-usage of Shaftesbury's little body by his
active mind appears in a sketch of him in Mulgrave's Essay on Satire,
which was erroneously ascribed to Dryden :

' As by our little Machiavel we find

That nimblest creature of the busy kind :

His legs are crippled, and his body shakes,

Yet his bold mind that all this bustle makes

No pity of its poor companion takes.

What gravity can hold from laughing out

To see that lug his feeble limbs about?

Like hounds ill-coupled, Jowler is so strong

He jades poor Trip and drags him all along.

'Tis such a cruelty as ne'er was known

To use a body thus, though 'tis one's own.'

The Essay on Satire is said to have been written in 1675 : it was first
circulated in manuscript in 1679. Duke, a friend and imitator of
Dryden, has described Shaftesbury in his poem called ' The Review,'
and some of his lines bear traces of Dryden's descriptions here and in
The Medal :

' Antonius, early in rebellious race

Swiftly set out, nor slackening in his pace;

The same ambition that his youthful heat

Urged to all ills, the little daring brat,

With unabated ardour does engage

The loathsome dregs of his decrepit age.

The working ferment of his active mind,
In his weak body's cask with pain confined,
Would burst the rotten vessel where 'tis pent,
But that 'tis tapt to give the treason vent.'

The last line is an unseemly allusion to an abscess from which Shaftes-
bury suffered, originally caused by a fall from a carriage, when he went
out to meet King Charles at Breda on the eve of the Restoration. The
abscess, which was internal, at one time endangered his life. A severe

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 265

operation restored him to health, which was afterwards preserved by
means of a silver pipe which kept the wound always open.

1.170. unfeathered two-legged thing. Dryden has here appropriated
for ribaldry Plato's humorous definition of man, a two-footed animal
without wings, £wov diirow airrfpov. Shaftesbury's son was a man of
no ability, but was the father of an able man, the third Earl, the meta-
physician, author of the Characteristics. Shaftesbury was three times
married, but had only two children, sons, by his second wife, Lady
Frances Cecil, who died in 1653 : one of the two died in infancy.

1. 175. the triple bond. The triple alliance of England, Holland,
and Sweden of 1667, directed against France. In June 1670, a second
treaty, of which Shaftesbury, though at the time a prominent minister,
knew nothing, was made with France for war against Holland and the
establishment of the Roman Catholic religion in England. The English
commissioners who signed this treaty were Arlington, Clifford, Lord
Arundel of Wardour, and Sir Richard Bellings ; the last two were not
ministers. Another treaty was afterwards concluded on December 31,
in appearance solely for alliance with France and war against Holland,
and this was signed by Buckingham, Shaftesbury (then Lord Ashley),
and Lauderdale, together with Arlington and Clifford. But Charles's
engagement about the Roman Catholic religion in the treaty of June
remained binding ; and that treaty was a secret from Buckingham,
Shaftesbury, and Lauderdale. Shaftesbury has his share of responsi-
bility for a treaty of alliance with France for a war against Holland.
But no one was louder at the time for this war and for the French
alliance than Dryden, who wrote in 1673 a bad play, Amboyna, for the
express purpose of inflaming the English public against the Dutch.
He there proclaimed the alliance of the two kings of England and
France to be necessary to destroy the pride of Holland :

'Yet is their empire no true growth, but humour,
And only two kings' touch can cure the tumour.'
These two lines are from Dryden 's Epilogue to Amboyna, and the Epi-
logue concludes with a reference to Cato's ' Delenda est Carthago,'
quoted by Shaftesbury in his speech for the King as Chancellor to Par-
liament in February 1673. Dryden perhaps derived the idea from
Shaftesbury's famous speech,

'All loyal English will like him conclude,
Let Caesar live, and Carthage be subdued.'

The play of Amboyna was dedicated to Lord Clifford, a friend and
patron of Dryden, with fulsome praises of Clifford as a statesman. Yet
Dryden in 1681 could revile Shaftesbury for ' breaking the triple bond'
and ' fitting Israel for a foreign yoke.' He repeats the accusation a few
months after in The Medal :

266 NOTES.

'Thus framed for ill, he loosed our triple hold —
Advice unsafe, precipitous, and bold.
From hence those tears, that Ilium of our woe :
Who helps a powerful friend forearms a foe.
What wonder if the waves prevail so far,
When he cut down the banks that made the bar?
Seas follow but their nature to invade,
But he by art our native strength betrayed.'

This is a flagrant example of Dryden's reckless inconsistency and un-

scrupulousness in attack.

I. 179. Assumed in. first edition instead of Usurped.

all-atoning, all-reconciling. The verb atone was used differently in
Dryden's time from its present use. It meant to ' harmonize,' ' unite,'
and was used transitively. Thus in Dryden's Poem on the Coronation,

57:

' He that brought peace and discord could atone,

His name is music of itself alone.'

' To atone her anger' (Love Triumphant, Act iv. Sc. i), ' To atone the
people' (Vindication of Duke of Guise). Atone was sometimes
wrongly spelt attone, the origin of the word being at one, ' to make at
one ' (see New English Dictionary). Atone is used similarly in
Shakespeare : ' I would do much to atone them for the love I bear to
Cassio ' (Othello, Act iv. Sc. i).

' Since we cannot atone you, we shall see
Justice design the victor's chivalry.'

King Richard II, Act i. Sc. i.

Elsewhere in Shakespeare atone is used intransitively, meaning ' to agree,'
as in Coriolanus, Act iv. Sc. 6 :

'He and Aufidius can no more atone
Than violentest contrariety.'

II. 180-191. These twelve lines were added in the second edition of
the poem. A very absurd story has been told, that these lines, contain-
ing high praise of Shaftesbury as a Judge, were added by Dryden in
gratitude for the gift of a nomination to the Charterhouse School for his
third son, Erasmus, by Shaftesbury, after the publication of Absalom
and Achitophel. The story was first published in Kippis's edition of
the Biographia Britannica, published in 1779. Malone took great pains
to refute this very improbable story. Dryden's son Erasmus was ad-
mitted to the Charterhouse in February 1683, on a nomination from the
King. The first edition of this poem appeared in November, and the
second in December, 1681. The story is simply impossible. Immedi-
ately after the publication of Absalom and Achitophel, Shaftesbury could
not have abased himself by offering a favour to Dryden, even if Dryden

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 267

were likely to accept it ; and then in a few months, in March, 1682,
Dryden published The Medal, a yet more savage attack on his supposed
forgiving benefactor. After all, the idea of praising Shaftesbury as a
Judge is in the lines 192-7, which were in the first edition. Why so
much praise was added in the second edition may be variously explained.
Dryden may have thought that further explanation was necessary for
connecting the passage beginning in line 192,

' Oh ! had he been content to serve the crown,'

with the preceding denunciation of Shaftesbury as a politician. Or he
may have thought that higher praise of him as a Judge might increase
by contrast the effect of his abuse of the statesman. Or, as Shaftesbury
had in the interval been acquitted of the charge of high treason and had
triumphed over his enemies, Dryden may have wished to say something
conciliatory for one whom he had so fiercely attacked, and who might
now again become formidable.

1. 1 88. Abbethdin, the president of the Jewish judicature. The word
is compounded of ab, 'father,' and beth-din, 'house of judgment,' and
means literally * father of the house of judgment.'

1. 196. What is meant by David's tuning his harp for Achitophel if
he had been other than he was, and its then resulting that ' Heaven had
wanted one immortal song,' probably is this, that David would then
have addressed a song to Achitophel instead of a lament to Heaven. I
have otherwise interpreted the passage in a note in the Globe Edition,
there representing the line, 'And Heaven had wanted one immortal
song,' as meaning that Dryden's own poem would then have been lost
to Heaven ; which would be a very arrogant boast. But I believe now
that this was a wrong interpretation. David as usual means Charles II ;
the harp is introduced again in 11. 439, 440.

1. 197. wanted, want is here used in a simple sense no longer cur-
rent, except provincially, ' to be without.' It occurs in the same sense
in Pope :

' Friend of my life, which did not you prolong,
The world had wanted many an idle song.'

Prologue to Satires, 27.

1. 198. Lord Macaulay, in his Essay on Sir William Temple, pointed
out the probable origin of this couplet, in some verses in Knolles's His-
tory of the Turks :

' Greatness on goodness loves to slide, not stand,
And leaves for Fortune's ice Virtue's firm land.'

1. 204. manifest of crimes, an imitation of Sallust's 'Manifestus tanti
sceleris ' ( Jugurtha, 39). Dryden uses the same idiom in Palamon and
Arcite, Bk. i. 623 :

' Calisto there stood manifest of shame.'

268 NOTES.

1. 209. The charge against Shaftesbury of * making circumstances ' of
the alleged Popish Plot is totally without proof, and against all proba-
bility. Shaftesbury entirely believed in the Plot, as did many others of
calmer temperament and high character : one of these was the virtuous
Lord Russell. Shaftesbury and Russell were entirely at one in the pro-
secution of the plot. Bishop Burnet, who disliked Shaftesbury, and
blamed him for his vehemence, acquits him of invention. (Hist, of Own
Time, ii. 168.)

1. 213. To prove 'the King a Jebusite ' was no calumnious attempt
of Shaftesbury. Charles is suspected to have been a Roman Catholic be-
fore the Restoration, and in indiscreet private talk he frequently betrayed
the sentiments of his heart. Burnet and Lord Halifax (in his ' Character
of Charles the Second ') both assume that he was a Roman Catholic.

1. 219. The accent is on the second syllable of instinct, according to
the pronunciation of the time. So again in line 535.

1. 227. This line is reproduced by Dryden in The Hind and the
Panther, Part i. 211. In one of the poems in Lacrymse Musarum, oc-
casioned by the death of Lord Hastings in 1649, to which collection
Dryden contributed his first known poem, the following couplet occurs :
'It is decreed we must be drained, I see,
Down to the dregs of a democracy.'
The phrase was probably early impressed on Dryden from this poem.

1. 235. Shuts up in first edition, instead of Divides.

I. 247. Like one of virtue^ s fools that feeds on praise. Scott and most
editors wrongly print feed.

*1. 252. Compare Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act iv. Sc. 3 :
'There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.'

II. 270-273. Compare Astrsea Redux, 1. 276.

1. 280. Naked of is a Gallicism. Dryden uses dry in the same way.
' Dry of pleasure ' (Love Triumphant, Act iii. Sc. i), ' Dry of those em-
braces ' (Amphitryon, Act iii. Sc. i ).

I. 291. the general cry. Scott and most editors wrongly print royal
for loyal.

1.318. mankind's delight. 'Amor atque deliciae generis humani,'
said by Suetonius of the Emperor Titus.

* 1. 328. Compare Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, Act iv. Sc. i,
on ' the quality of mercy . . .' ' It is an attribute to God himself.'

II. 353-360. This elaborate eulogy on Charles's brother, James Duke
of York, may be compared with Dryden's characters of James in the
play The Duke of Guise, produced in 1682, and in the Threnodia Au-

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. <z6<)

gustalis, the elegy on Charles II's death. James's truthfulness is dwelt
on in both characters ; his merciful and forgiving disposition in the
sketch of him in The Duke of Guise, where the King of France praises
to the Archbishop of Lyons his ' brother of Navarre ' :
King. ' I know my brother's nature ; 'tis sincere,
Above deceit, no crookedness of thought ;
Says what he means, and what he says performs ;
Brave but not rash ; successful but not proud ;
So much acknowledging, that he's uneasy
Till every petty service be o'erpaid.
Archbp. Some say revengeful.
King. Some then libel him :

But that's what both of us have learnt to bear;
He can forgive, but you disdain forgiveness.'

Duke of Guise, Act v. Sc. I.
' For all the changes of his doubtful state
His truth, like Heaven's, was kept inviolate ;
For him to promise is to make it fate.
His valour can triumph o'er land and main ;
With broken oaths his fame he will not stain,
With conquest basely bought and with inglorious gain.*

Threnodia Augustalis, 485-490.

Compare also Dryden's character of James in The Hind and the Panther,
Part iii. beginning at line 906 : ' A plain good man,' &c.

I. 416. million in first edition, instead of nation.

II. 417, 418. Dryden here describes the government of the Common-
wealth before Cromwell's Protectorate as a theocracy. In line 522 he
speaks of an ' old beloved theocracy.'

1. 436. This line was changed by Derrick so as to make a question :

' Is 't after God's own heart to cheat his heir ? '

and Derrick's change has been adopted by succeeding editors, including
Scott. Dryden makes Achitophel assert it to be ' after God's own heart
to cheat his heir,' i.e. to deprive the Duke of York of his succession.
This is intended for the assertion of a wicked counsellor. Derrick's
change spoils the sense.

1. 447. This simile of the lion is again used by Dryden in Sigismunda
and Guiscardo, 241 :

' For malice and revenge had put him on his guard,
So, like a lion that unheeded lay,
Dissembling sleep and watchful to betray,
WTith inward rage he meditates his prey ? '
See also The Hind and the Panther, iii. 267-272.

1. 461. Prevail yourself . Avail was substituted by Derrick for prevail,

270 NOTES.

and the editors have followed Derrick. The same has happened where
Dryden uses the same verb prevail reflectively, as in the preface to Annus
Mirabilis.

1. 519. Levites, priests; the Presbyterian ministers displaced by the
Act of Uniformity.

* 11. 524-568. See Dryden 's own criticism on this character in the Essay
on Satire, prefixed to his translation of Juvenal (Works, ed. Scott, xiii.
95). He concludes : ' The character of " Zimri " is, in my opinion, worth
the whole poem. It is not bloody, but it is ridiculous enough, and he
for whom it was intended was too witty to resent it as an injury. ... I
avoided the mention of great crimes, and applied myself to the repre-
senting of blind sides and little extravagances, to which, the wittier a
man is, he is generally the more obnoxious.'

1. 525. Aaron's race, the clergy. For in this line has been carelessly
changed into To in most editions, including Scott's.

1. 544. Zimri, George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, a poet
as well as a politician, who united great talents with extreme profligacy.
There is a well-known brilliant sketch of this Buckingham in Pope's
Moral Essays. He ran through a very large fortune.

' Alas ! how changed for him
That life of pleasure and that soul of whim !
Gallant and gay in Cleveden's proud alcove,
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love ;
Or just as gay at council in a ring
Of mimicked statesmen and their merry king.
No wit to flatter left of all his store !
No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.
There victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.'

Moral Essays, iii. 309.

Buckingham, in The Rehearsal, had unsparingly ridiculed Dryden's
plays, and given Dryden the nickname of Bayes. The Rehearsal was
first acted in 1671. Dryden took his revenge on Buckingham now.
Buckingham wrote a reply to this poem, under the title, 'Poetic Re-
flections on a late Poem, entitled Absalom and Achitophel, by a Person
of Honour.' This reply was a very poor production, unworthy of the
author of The Rehearsal.

1. 574. Balaam, the Earl of Huntingdon, younger brother of the Lord
Hastings, whose premature death in youth was lamented by Dryden in
his first known poem. Lord Huntingdon was now a very zealous mem-
ber of Shaftesbury's party, bent on the exclusion of James Duke of York
from succession to the throne ; but he afterwards changed his politics
and became a warm adherent of James.

ABSALOM AND ACHITOFHEL. 27 1

*1. 574. Well-hung, voluble, fluent, —

'Flippant of talk and voluble of tongue
With words at will, no lawyer better hung.'

Oldham, Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal.
Caleb, Ford, Lord Grey of Wark.

1. 575. Nadab, Lord Howard of Escrick, the third peer of that title.
He had been lately a prisoner in the Tower on account of accusations
made by Fitzharris, and he is accused of having taken the Sacrament
when in prison, to assert his innocence, in a mixture of ale and apples
called ' lamb's wool.' Lord Howard afterwards became infamous by
betraying Lord Russell and Algernon Sydney.

1- 581. Jonas, Sir William Jones, the Attorney-General who conducted
the prosecutions of the Popish Plot. Mr. Luttrell, in a manuscript note
on this poem, says that Sir William Jones drew the Habeas Corpus Act.

I. 585. This line stood in the first edition,

'Shimei, whose early youth did promise bring.'
Shimei is Slingsby Bethel, who had been elected one of the sheriffs
of London in 1680. He had been conspicuous as a republican before
the Restoration, and was a member of Richard Cromwell's parliament.
His stinginess was a by-word :

'And though you more than Buckingham has spent
Or Cuddon got, like stingy Bethel save,
And grudge yourself the charges of a grave.'

Oldham, Imitation of Eighth Satire of Boileau.

II. 585-681. ' Most satirists are usually prone to the error of attacking
either mere types, or else individuals too definitely marked as individuals.
The first is the fault of Regnier and all the minor French satirists, the
second is the fault of Pope. In the first case the point and zest of the
thing are apt to be lost, and the satire becomes a declamation against vice
and folly in the abstract. In the second case a suspicion of personal
pique comes in, and it is felt that the requirement of art, the disengage-
ment of the general law from the individual instance, is not sufficiently
attended to.' Dryden avoids both these faults. ' His figures are always
at once types and individuals. Zimri is at once Buckingham and the
idle grand seigneur who plays at politics and learning, Achitophel at
once Shaftesbury and the abstract intriguer, Shimei at once Bethel and
the sectarian politician of all days.' Saintsbury, Dryden, p. 77.

1. 595. vare, a wand, from the Spanish vara. The word occurs in
Howel's Letters (p. 161, ed. 1728) : 'The proudest don of Spain, when
he is prancing upon his ginet in the street, if an alguazil show him his
vare, that is, a little white staff he carrieth as a badge of his office, my
don will presently off his horse and yield himself his prisoner.' The
word vase has been substituted for vare in some editions, including Scott's.

272 NOTES.

1. 634. An allusion to the serpent of brass made by Moses, and ' set
upon a pole ' by God's command, to save the Israelites from the fiery
serpents which God had sent for punishment. ' And it came to pass
that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass
he lived.' (Numbers xxi. 6, 9.)

1. 637. earthy : incorrectly printed earthly in some editions.

1. 644. Ours was a Levite. Titus Gates had taken orders in the
Church of England, and his father was a Church of England clergyman,
having been before an Anabaptist minister.

1. 649. A church vermillion and a Moses1 face. The rubicund look
of a jolly churchman, and a shining face supposed to be like that of
Moses, when he came down from the Mount (Exod. xxxiv. 29-35).

1. 658. Rabbinical degree. Gates represented that he had received the
degree of Doctor of Divinity at Salamanca.

1. 665. wit in first edition, instead of writ.

1. 676. Agag's murder. The murder of Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey,
the magistrate before whom Gates had deposed on oath his story of the
Popish Plot, and who was soon after found dead near Primrose Hill.
The believers in the Popish Plot charged the Roman Catholics with
having murdered Godfrey in revenge. It was urged on the opposite
side that Gates and his witnesses instigated the murder in order to
impute it to the Roman Catholics. Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey was
reputed friendly to the Roman Catholics, and was said to be unwilling
to take the depositions. Dryden's meaning seems to be that Godfrey
was murdered at the call of Gates, for being friendly to the Roman
Catholics. See I Samuel xv. for Samuel's reproaches to Saul for dis-
obeying the Lord's command and sparing Agag.

1. 688. Dissembling joy in first edition, instead of His joy concealed.

1. 700. Behold a banished man. Monmouth had been sent out of
England by the King in September 1679, and in November he returned
without permission. The King then ordered him again to quit England,
and he disobeyed, whereupon he was deprived of all his offices and
banished from court.

* 1. 738. Wise Issachar, his wealthy western friend. Thomas Thynne
of Longleat, who on account of his wealth went by the name of Tom of
Ten Thousand. Wise is ironical. ' Issachar is a strong ass ' (Genesis
xliv. 14), and Tom Thynne's reputation is hinted at in a satire which
refers to the assault on Dryden mentioned in p. xxx of the preface :
' What drudge would be in Dryden's cudgelled skin,
Or who'd be safe and senseless like Tom Thynne ? '

State Poems, vol. i. pt. 2. p. 33.

Thynne was murdered in February 1682, a few months after the publi-
cation of this poem, by assassins employed by Count Konigsmark, who

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 273

desired to marry Lady Ogle, a young heiress to whom Thynne was
betrothed.

1. 742. depth in first edition, instead of depths.

*11. 759-768. According to Hobbes the State was based on a contract
or covenant. Men, weary of the perpetual warfare and insecurity of the
state of nature, covenanted together to surrender their right of governing
themselves to a sovereign, or to a sovereign assembly. This covenant or
contract was irrevocable, and the power thus transferred could not be
resumed by those who gave it. Dryden and the Tories in general
accepted this view. The Whigs held that the transfer of power was
only conditional, not absolute.

1. 777. In the first edition this line stood,

'That power which is for property allowed.'

* 1. 794. In the state of nature, according to Hobbes, there can be * no
property, no mine and thine distinct; but only that to be every man's
that he can get, and for so long as he can keep it.'

1. 802. This line has been generally printed after Derrick,
'To patch their flaws and buttress up the wall.'
But the change of the to their beforeyfow-r is not necessary, nor is it an
improvement.

1. 804. Broughton changed our ark into the ark, and has been gener-
ally followed by succeeding editors. But there is no reason for the
change.

1. 817. Barzillai, the Duke of Ormond, an old Cavalier, who was
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for Charles I at the beginning of the Civil
War, and was re-appointed by Charles II to the same post after the
Restoration. He was removed in 1669, but re-appointed a few years
after ; and he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at the time of the publi-
cation of this poem. The duke was one of Dryden's patrons : Carte,
in his life of Ormond, mentions Dryden as one of his periodical dinner-
guests. Dryden dedicated, in 1683, to the Duke of Ormond the trans-
lation of Plutarch's Lives, to which was prefixed a Life of Plutarch, by
Dryden. Ormond died 1688, before the Revolution. Dryden dedicated
his Fables, published in 1699, to the duke's grandson and successor,
son of the Earl of Ossory, who died in July 1680, and who is eulogised
in the lines which soon follow.

1.825. The court he practised. To practise the court is a Gallicism.

1. 827. chuse is the spelling here to rhyme with Muse. Later, in
line 979, it is printed choose, where the rhyme is with depose. In The
Hind and the Panther, Part i. line 40, chuse rhymes with use. See note
on Astrsea and Redux, 119, for similar variety of spelling, straw
and strew to suit rhyme : and it is the same with show and shew in
Dryden.

T

274 NOTES.

1. 834. By unequal fates and Providence's crime. Compj re
' Fortunae, Ptolemaee, pudor crimenque Deorum.'

Lucan, Phais. v. 59.

Unequal fates is probably Dryden's translation of Virgil's ' fata
iniqua ' (Aen. ii. 257, and x. 380).

1. 858. And left this verse,

To hang on her departed patron's hearse.
Compare Pope :

* Or teach the melancholy Muse to mourn,
Hang the sad verse on Carolina's urn.'

Epilogue to the Satires, 79.

It was an old custom to hang funeral poems on the hearse. See
Shakespeare, Much Ado, Act v. Sc. iii. Claudio hangs verses on Hero's
monument :

* Hang thou there upon the tomb,
Praising her when I am dumb.'

1. 875. Who best could plead and best can judge a cause. Here
Dryden, who never uses a word at random, speaks of judges who had
been barristers, and who formerly were the best pleaders as now the
best judges. Broughton, not seeing this, changed who best could plead
into who best can plead: and succeeding editors followed him. In the
Preface to The State of Innocence, Dryden had written, ' He must be a
lawyer before he mounts the tribunal.'

I. 877. Adriel, John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, who was afterwards
made Marquis of Normanby by King William, and Duke of Bucking-
hamshire by Queen Anne. Mulgrave was a poet, and a great friend of
Dryden. He was the author of the Essay on Satire, which was wrongly
ascribed to Dryden, and for which Dryden was cudgelled in Rose Alley,
in December, 1679. Mulgrave was bountiful to Dryden after the
Revolution of 1688, when he had lost the poet-laureateship. Dryden
dedicated to him the Translation of the Aeneid. Mulgrave, then Duke
of Buckinghamshire, erected a monument to Dryden in Westminster
Abbey, in 1720, twenty years after the poet's death. Dryden in writing
' The Muses' friend ' may have had Horace's ' Musis amicus,' applied to
Lamia (Od. i. 26), in his mind.

II. 880, 88 1. Charles deprived Monmouth of all his offices and honours
in 1679 ; and of these he gave the Lord Lieutenancy of the East Riding
of Yorkshire and the government of Hull to Mulgrave.

1. 882. Jotham, George Savile, who inherited a baronetcy and was
created by Charles II successively Viscount, Earl, and Marquis of
Halifax, was a statesman of great ability and accomplishments. He
held the office of Lord Privy Seal, and was one of Charles's chief
advisers during the last four years of his reign. He was a * Trimmer,'

ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

the name given to the party of moderation in the violent disputes
between Charles and the opposition, headed by Shaftesbury and Russell.
He wrote the ' Character of a Trimmer.' Dryden dedicated to him his
play of King Arthur, produced and published in 1691 ; and in this
dedication he says that Halifax had 'held a principal place in King
Charles's esteem, and perhaps the first in his affection during his
latter troubles.' Halifax took a prominent part in bringing about the
Revolution of 1688.

ready stands instead of piercing in the first edition in line 882.

1. 888. Hushai, Laurence Hyde, second son of the Lord Chancellor
Clarendon, created in 1680 Viscount Hyde, and in 1682 Earl of
Rochester. He was appointed one of the Commissioners of the
Treasury in 1679, an(i soon became first Commissioner and a leading
minister. On the accession of James he was made Lord Treasurer.
Hyde befriended Dryden. Dryden's and Lee's Duke of Guise was
dedicated to Rochester 1682, and Dryden dedicated to him in 1692 his
Cleomenes. In the latter dedication Dryden refers to Rochester's
kindness to him when he was powerful at the Treasury in the reigns of
Charles II and James II : ' Your goodness has not been wanting to me
during the reign of my two masters, and even from a bare Treasury my
success has been contrary to that of Mr. Cowley, and Gideon's fleece
has there been moistened, when all the ground has been dry about it.'

1. 899. Amiel, Edward Seymour, who had been Speaker of the
House of Commons from 1673 to 1679. ^e succeeded to a baronetcy
in 1688, and is best known as Sir Edward Seymour. He was the head
of the house of Seymour, the then Duke of Somerset being of a younger
branch of the family. He opposed the Bill of Exclusion ; he was
afterwards an eager promoter of the Revolution.

1. 910. the unequal ruler of the day, Phaeton, unequal, incompetent.

1. 920. plume, pluck. The regal rights are to be plucked like a bird's
feathers. Elsewhere Dryden uses the word plume in the sense of strip
or rob by plucking : ' He has left the faction as bare of arguments as
^Esop's bird of feathers, and plumed them of all those fallacies and
evasions which they borrowed from Jesuits and Presbyterians.' (Vin-
dication of the Duke of Guise.)

• One whom, instead of banishing a day,
You should have plumed of all his borrowed honours.'

Maiden Queen, Act iii. Sc. I.
' Not with more ease the falcon from above
Trusses in middle air the trembling dove,
Then plumes the prey.' Translation of Aeneid, xi. 1045.

1. 939. With reference to David's speech, which begins at this line,
Spence says that he was told by Pope that ' King Charles obliged

T 2

276 NOTES.

Dryden to put his Oxford speech into verse, and to insert it towards the
close of his Absalom and Achitophel.' (Anecdotes of Men and Books,
p. 112.) The Oxford speech is the speech made by Charles at the
opening of the parliament at Oxford, March 21, 1681. There are some
points of resemblance in the two speeches, but David's speech is
certainly far from being a paraphrase of King Charles's.

11. 957-960. These four lines about Monmouth were added in the
second edition.

1. 966. destroy in first edition, instead of supplant*

I. 971. His old instructor , Shaftesbury, who lost his place as Chan-
cellor in Nov. 1673.

*11. 1006-1009 may be thus paraphrased: 'They, i.e. the factious
party, demand law and shall have law. They are not content with my
clemency, with grace or mercy — which is as it were the hinder parts of
law and may be seen with safety — but rashly demand to see the very face of
law.' ' Grace ' is explained by lines 939-944 ; ' Law ' by lines 991-1003.

II. 1007, 8. Grace Her hinder parts. There is a reference here, as in
Astrsea Redux (262-265), to the appearance of God to Moses: 'And
he (the Lord) said, Thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man
see me and live. And the Lord said, Behold, there is a place by me,
and thou shalt stand upon a rock, and it shall come to pass, while my
glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover
thee with my hand, while I pass by : and I will take away mine hand
and thou shalt see my back parts ; but my face shall not be seen ' (Exodus
xxxiii. 20-23). See The Hind and the Panther, Part iii. line 1040,

1 Vice, though frontless and of hardened face,
Is daunted at the sight of awful grace.'
1. 1009. From Ovid ; Ars Amat. i. 655,

'Neque enim lex aequior ulla est
Quam necis artifices arte perire sua.'
1. 1030. 'Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.'

Virg. Eel. iv. 5.

'Incipient magni procedere menses.' Id. 12.
And compare in Annus Mirabilis, stanza 18,

'And now, a round of greater years begun/
Also Astroea Redux,!. 292.

GLOSSARY.

O. C. refers to the Stanzas on the death of Oliver Cromwell ; A. R. to
Astraea Redux ; A. M. to Annus Mirabilis ; A. A. to Absalom and Achitophel ;
R. L. to Religio Laici ; and H. P. to The Hind and the Panther.

The numbers after O. C. and A. M. refer to the stanzas ; in the other cases
to lines of the poems.

A.

Abate, v. i. lessen, ' abate of virulence.' Preface to R. L.
Abbethdin, sb. chief judge among the Jews. A. A. 188.
Admire, v. i. wonder. H. P. iii. 388.
Affect, v. t. seek, desire. A. M. 273 ; A. A. 177.
Affright, sb. fear. A. A. 71.
Alga, sb. sea-weed. A. R. 1 19.
Allay, sb. alloy. H. P. i. 320.
Allude, v. i. compare. H. P. iii. 366.
Amain, adv. vehemently. H. P. iii. 620.
Antique, adj. strange, grotesque. H.P. iii. 488.
Armado, sb. army. A. M. 14.
Arose, p.p. arisen. O. C. 36.
Assay, v.t. try, essay. O. C. 12 ; H. P. iii. 796.

Atone, v. t. reconcile, harmonise, A. A. 1 79 : used intransitivel)', R. L. 89.
Auctority, sb. authority. H. P. i. 453, ii. 276. Elsewhere authority.
Auspice, sb. patronage. A. M. 288.

Authentic, adj. authoritative, authorised. O. C. 2 ; H. P. iii. 838 ; Pref.
to R.L.

B.

Bad, v. perfect of bid, ordered. H.P. i. 531.

Benting, adj. ' benting times,' times when pigeons feed on bent, a coarse

grass. H.P. iii. 1283.

Big-corned, adj. big-grained, ' big-corned powder.' A. M. 149.
Bilander, sb. coasting vessel. H. P. i. 128.
Blatant, adj. howling, barking. H. P. iii. 230.
Bleaky, adj. bleak. H.P. iii. 612.

3°4 GLOSSARY.

Botch, sb. sore spot, eruption. H. P. ii. 542.

Brave, sb. bravo. A. A. 967.

Breathe, v. t. to open, lance; applied to opening a vein. O. C. 12.

Brew, v. t. mix, make. O. C. 25 ; A. R. 296.

Broke, p.p. broken. A.M. 239, 255.

Build (spelt built in original edition), shape. A. M. 60.

-

Castor, sb. beaver. A. M. 25.

Gates, sb. food. H.P. ii. 721.

Cense, v. i. scatter incense. H. P. iii. 753.

Cham, sb. Ham, son of Noah. Pref. to R. L.

Check, sb. ' fly at check,' fly at random. A. M. 86.

Cheer, sb. countenance. H. P. iii. 437.

Chirurgeon, sb. surgeon. Pref. to A. A.

Chose, p. p. chosen. A. M. 75.

Circular, adj. complete, perfect, ' circular fame.' O. C. 5.

Circularly, adv. all round, in circles. A. M. 2.

Clip, v. i. fly fast, ' clips it.' A. M. 86.

Cockle, sb. weed in corn. A. A. 195.

Commonweal, sb. commonwealth. H.P. i. 234.

Complexion, sb. physical disposition. O. C. 25.

Composure, sb. reconciliation. Pref. to A. A.

Concernment, sb. care, concern. Pref. to A. M.

Confident, sb. a person confided in. O. C. 25.

Connatural, adj. of same nature, ' connatural to.' Pref. to A. M.

Consequent, sb. consequence. Pref. to A. A.

Corps, sb. corpse, body, used for plural as well as singular ; plural, H. P. i. 23.

Couch, v. t. lay down. H. P. i. 722.

Couchee, sb. evening reception. H. P. i. 516.

Courage, sb. used in the plural, ' courages.' A. M. 76, 93.

Cozenage, sb. deception. H. P. ii. 258.

Crack, sb. noise of falling, crash. A. M. 238.

Cross, adv. across. A. M. 156, 233.

Curtana, sb. the sword of mercy. H. P. ii. 419.

D.

Dared, p.p. frightened, bewildered ; applied to larks. A. M. 195.
Dauby, adj. sticky. A. M. 148.
Decease, v. i. die. O. C. 34.
Deducement, sb. deduction. Pref. to R. L.

GLOSSARY*. 305

Designment, sb. design. O. C. 24.

Despite, sb. spite. H. P. iii. 70.

Detort, v. t. twist. Pref. to R. L.

Devest, v. t. divest. H. P. i. 187.

Digestive, adj. digesting. A. R. 89.

Dint, sb. force. H. P. iii. 200.

Disembogue, v. i. empty out. H. P. ii. 562.

Disheir, v. t. deprive of an heir. H. P. iii. 705.

Disinteressed, adj. disinterested. R. L. 335.

Dismission, sb. dismissal. H. P. i. 346.

Doom, -v. t. destine, used familiarly, ' doom wool into France.* A. M. 207,

Dorp, sb. village. H. P. iii. 61 1.

Doted, adj. doting, foolish. H. P. iii. 152.

Earthy, adj. of the earth. A. A. 637.

Eiry, sb. nest. A. M. 107.

Epoche, sb. epoch. A. R. 108.

Essay, sb. first effort, trial. A. M. 140; H. P. i. 200.

Evince, v. t. prove. H. P. ii. 190, 233.

Expire, v. i. applied to a ball coming out of a cannon. A. M. 1 88.

Face, v. t. put on a facing. H. P. iii. 199.

Factor, sb. agent. A. R. 78.

Firmamental, adj. of the firmament. A. M. 281.

Flix, sb. fur of the hare. A. M. 132.

Fogue, sb. fury. A. R. 203.

Forbear, v. t. forbear from, spare. A. A. 37.

Forgot, p. p. forgotten. H.P. ii. 333.

Fowl, sb. bird, birds, used in plural sense. A. M. 85 ; H.P. i. 1243.

Fowls occurs, H.P. iii. 585.
Frequent, adj. crowded. H.P. iii. 25.
Fright, v. t. frighten. A. M. 50, 109 ; H. P. i. 79.
Frontless, adj. shameless. Pref. to R. L., and H P. iii. 1040, 1187.
Froze, p. p. frozen. A. M. 285.

G.

Gage, sb. pledge. A. M. 20.

Galled (spelt ganled in original editions), p. p. rubbed. A. M. 148 ; R. L.
404.

X

306 GLOSSARY.

Gaud, sb. ornament. A. M. 206.

Genius, sb. ' a genius,' a character of genius. Pref. to A. A.

Give on, v. i. proceed violently. A. M. 280.

Godsmith, sb. God-maker. A. A. 50.

Graff, v. t. graft. Pref. to R. L.

Grave, v. t. engrave. H.P. ii. 321.

Gross, sb. size, A. M. 152, 233 : ' in gross,' in the general, R. L. 322.

|

H.

Haggared or haggered, adj. haggard, wild. H.P. i. 166 : iii. 1 1 16.
Hard-head, H.P. ii. 443.
Hatch, v. t. build. A. M. 198, 288.
Hattered out, p. p. wearied. H. P. i. 371.
He, pron. used as substantive, ' another he,' A. A. 86 1 : ' that universal

He/R.L. 15.

Heir, v. t. inherit. H.P. iii. 714.
Her, pron. in lieu of 's for genitive. A. A. 1008.

His, pron. in lieu of 's for genitive. A. R. 19, 49, 1 1 1, 231 ; H. P. ii. 655.
Hobby, sb. hawk. A.M. 195.
Holland, sb. cloth from Holland. A. M. 206.

I.

Imp, v. t. repair ; applied to wings. A. M. 143.

Impassible, adj. incapable of suffering. H.P. i. 95.

Industrious, adj. ' industrious of.' H.P. ii. 571.

Innocency, sb. innocence. Pref. to R. L.

Innovate, v. t. introduce for the first time. Pref. to A. M.

Instop, v. t. fill up. A. M. 147.

Interessed, p. p. interested. Pref. to R. L.

J.
Joy, v. t. make joyful, A. M. no: v. i. rejoice, A. M. 117, 181.

K.

Ken, sb. sight. A. M. 1 1 1, 159.
Kern, sb. Irish peasant. A.M. 157.
Key, sb. quay. A. M. 231.

GLOSSARY. 307

Lade, v. /. load. A. M. 252.

Lag, v. i. loiter behind. A. M. 85 ; H. P. iii. 1284.

Laveer, v. i. tack about. A. R. 65.

Lazar, sb. a filthy deformed person. Pref. to A. M.

Leech, sb. doctor. A.R. 175.

Left, sb. ' left of,' left by. A. A. 568.

Legator, sb. testator. H. P. ii. 375.

Letted, p. p. ' letted of,' hindered from. A. M. 222.

Levee, sb. morning reception. H. P. i. 516.

Like, v. t. please. H. P. iii. 477.

Limbec (spelt limbeck in original editions), sb. alembic. A.M. 13, 166.

Linstock, sb. a match-holder for firing cannon. A.M. 188.

Loll, v. t. stretch out. A. M. 132.

Mackrel, adj. mackerel, « a mackrel gale.' H. P. iii. 456.

Manifest, adj. ' manifest of crimes.' A. A. 204.

Mannerly, adj. well-mannered. H. P. i. 556.

Marling, sb. a small tarred line for winding round ropes. A.M. 148.

Martlet, sb. a species of swallow. A.M. no; and note on H. P. iii. 547.

Miss, v. i. ' miss of.' H. P. iii. 1189.

Missioner, sb. missionary. H. P. ii. 565.

Mould, sb. form, shape, make, A.M. 72, 293; A. A. 368 : material, H.P.

i. 247.

Moulted, p. p. afflicted by moulting. A. M. 143.
Muck, sb. 'an Indian muck,' H.P. iii. 1118: 'amuck,' from amocca, a

Malay word for ' kill.'
Musquet, sb. a small hawk. H. P. iii. ii 19.

N.

Naked, adj. ' naked of friends.' A. A. 280.

Name, sb. used as if it were the person or thing named. H.P. i. 156.

Need, v. i. be needed. R. L. 126; H.P. iii. 321, 1428.

Noblesse, sb. nobility. Pref. to A. M.

Noiseful, adj. noisy. A. M. 40.

O.

Obligement, sb. obligation. H.P. i. 437.

Obscene, adj. loathsome, ugly. H.P. ii. 595, 652 ; iii. 726.

X 2

308 G L O S S A R Y.

Officious, adj. obliging, serviceable. O. C. I ; A.M. 184.
Out, v. t. oust. Pref. to R. L.

P.

Pain, sb. labour. A.M. 32.

Palliard, sb. a lewd person, a rascal. H.P. ii. 563.

Pardalis, sb. panther. H. P. iii. 667.

Paronomasia, sb. pun. Pref. to A. M.

Pay o'er, v. t. spread over. A. M. 147.

Pile, sb. troop. H.P. ii. 161.

Plagiary, sb. plagiarist. Pref. to A. M.

Plume, v. t. pluck. A. A. 920.

Poll, v. t. cut down. H.P. iii. 631.

Poppet, sb. puppet. H.P. iii. 780.

Practice, v. t. frequent. A. A. 825.

Presume, v. i. ' presume of.' H.P. i. 388 ; iii. 511.

Prevail, v. avail, ' prevail oneself of.' Pref. to A. M. ; A. A. 461.

Prevaricated, p. p. made a disingenuous use of. Pref. to R. L.

Prevent, v. t. anticipate, go before. O. C. 41, 33 ; A. R. 282 ; A. A. 344 ;

H.P. ii.64i.

Prime, sb. spring. H. P. iii. 536.
Procedure, sb. proceeding. A. R. 88.
Prefer, v. t. proffer. H. P. iii. 766. Elsewhere spelt proffer in original

editions.

Proponent, sb. a person propounding. H.P. i. 121.
Protractive, adj. protracting. H.P. iii. 1103.
Purchase, sb. acquisition. A. R. 86.

Q.

Quarry, sb. anything aimed at, A.M. Pref., 86, 281 ; H.P. i. 104: game

as distinguished from vermin, H.P. ii. 21.
Quatrain, sb. stanza of four lines which rhyme alternately. Pref. to A.M.

R.

Rabbin, sb. rabbi, doctor among the Jews. A. A. 104.

Rabbinical, adj. of a doctor. A. A. 658.

Raise, v. a. extol. A. A. no.

Raven, v. i. hunger. H.P. iii. 964.

Rebate, v. t. blunt. Pref. to A. A.

Reflective, adj. reflected. A.M. 253.

Remainders, sb. plural of remainder, used as if singular. H.P. iii. 602.

GLOSSARF. 309

Remnants, sb. used in the plural like remainders. A. M. 102, 258; H. P.

i. 510; iii. 276.

Renounce, v. i. ' renounce to.' H. P. iii. 143.
Renown, v. /. make renowned. R. L. 75.
Renunciation, sb. used with to after, as the verb renounce. H. P. ii. 648

(marginal note).

Repair, sb. resort. A. M. 220.
Repeat, v. t. reseek. A. M. 257.

Repose, v. t. place as a trust, with upon after. Pref. to A. M.
Reprise, sb. reprisal. H. P. iii. 862.
Republic, adj. republican. H. P. iii. 1251.
Require, v. t. seek again. A. M. 256.
Resolve, v. i. melt, dissolve, H. P. i. 446.
Rest, sb. remainder. H. P. iii. 85.
Restiff, adj. restive. H. P. 1026.
Retire, v. t. draw back. A. M. 249.
Rid, v. perfect of ' ride.' Pref. to R. L.

S.

Scanted, pp. curtailed, circumscribed. A. A. 369, 839.

Scape, v.«. escape. A. R. 180; A.M. 220; H.P. i. 172; ii. 7.

Seal, v. t. used figuratively ' sealed our new-born king.' A. M. 18.

Sear-cloth, v. t. cover with sear-cloth (cere or wax cloth). A. M. 148.

Shard, sb. dung, ordure. H.P. i. 321.

Sheer, v. t. cut. A. M. 78.

Ship-wrack, sb. shipwreck. A. M. 35.

Shipwracked, p.p. A. R. 125; A.M. 2, 71, 251.

Shore, sb. sewer. H.P. ii. 558.

Show, v.i. appear. A.M. 66, 121, 126, 296.

Sincere, adj. pure. H.P. ii. 250.

Sincerely, adv. purely, without alloy. A. A. 43.

Sort, sb. number, collection. H. P. iii. 946.

Sovereign, adj. all-powerful. O. C. 19.

Spoom, v. i. sail before the wind. H. P. iii. 96.

Sprite, sb. spirit. H.P. ii. 653.

Squander, v. t. disperse. A. M. 67.

Steepy, adv. steep. A. A. 860.

Sterve, v. i. starve. H. P. iii. 749.

Stickler, sb. sidesman or second in a fight. O. C. II.

Strook, v. (perfect) struck. A. R. 171.

Submit, v. t. lower. A. R. 249.

Succeed, v. t. make to follow or succeed. A.M. 175, 292.

Successive, adj. of or by succession. A. A. 301.

310

GLOSSARY.

Suffice, v. t. suffice. H. P. i. 554.

Swift, adj. ' swift of despatch.' A. A. 191.

Swisses, sb. plural of Swiss. H.P. iii. 177.

T.

Tarnish, v. i. become stained. A. A. 249.

Tax, v. t. accuse, ' tax of.' H. P. iii. 227.

Tell, v. t. count. A. M. 34, 76.

Theologue, sb. Theologian. H. P. iii. 1147.

Thick, adv. quickly following. A.M. 120.

Thick, adj. ' thick of.' O. C. 14.

Threat, v. t. threaten. A. M. 6 1 ; A. A. 141.

Timely, adv. in time. A. R. 190.

Tire, sb. row of guns. H.P. iii. 317.

Too too, adv. excessively. A. R. HI.

Took, p. p. taken. A. R. 144.

Traditive, adj. traditional. H.P. ii. 196.

Transact, v. i. act. H.P. iii. 14.

Travellour, sb. traveller. A.R. 148.

Treasonous, adj. treasonable. H.P. iii. 633.

Trine, sb. conjunction of three planets making a triangle. A.M. 292.

Trust, v. i. followed by on. A.M. 295.

Turbulent, adj. 'turbulent of evil.' A. A. 153.

TJ.

Unblamed, adj. ' unblamed of life.' A. A. 479.
Ungodded, p. p. having no gods. H.P. iii. 742.
Unhoped, adj. unexpected. A.R. 140.
Unknowing, adj. not knowing. A.M. 96.
Unlade, v. t. empty, unload. A.M. 300.
Unsatiate, adj. insatiable. A. A. 987.
Unsincere, adj. mixed, alloyed. A. M. 209.
Unthrift, sb. prodigal. H. P. iii. 296.

V.

Vare, sb. wand. A. A. 595.

W.

"Wait, v. t. attend, accompany. H.P. i. 557.
Want, v. t. be without. A. A. 197.

GLOSSARY. 311

Wanting, adj. needy, poor. A. M. 274 ; A. A. 407, 892.
Well-breathed, adj. with good lungs. A. A. 630.
Wex, v. i. wax, grow. A. M. 4.
Wilder, v. t. bewilder. H. P. ii. 682.
Witness, sb. evidence. H. P. i. 62.
Worser, adj. worse. A. R. 3.

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